View source for Judith Butler

{{Short description|American feminist gender studies philosopher (born 1956)}}
{{Use American English|date=April 2022}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=June 2012}}
{{Infobox philosopher
| name = Judith Butler
| image = JudithButler2013.jpg
| caption = Butler in 2012
| birth_name = Judith Pamela Butler
| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1956|2|24}}
| birth_place = [[Cleveland, Ohio]], U.S.
| education = {{Plainlist|
* [[Bennington College]]
* [[Yale University]] ([[Bachelor of Arts|BA]], [[Master of Arts|MA]], [[Doctor of Philosophy|PhD]])
* [[Heidelberg University]]}}
| partner = [[Wendy Brown]]
| children = 1
| era = {{nowrap|[[20th-century philosophy|20th-]]/[[21st-century philosophy]]}}
| region = [[Western philosophy]]
| school_tradition = {{hlist |[[Continental philosophy]] |[[third-wave feminism]] |[[critical theory]] |[[queer theory]] |[[performative turn]]}}
| institutions = [[University of California, Berkeley]] [[The European Graduate School]]
| doctoral_advisor = [[Maurice Natanson]]
| main_interests = {{hlist |[[Feminist theory]] |[[political philosophy]] |[[ethics]] |[[psychoanalysis]] |[[phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenology]] |[[discourse]] |[[embodied cognition|embodiment]] |[[human sexuality|sexuality]] |[[gender studies]] |[[Jewish philosophy]]}}
| notable_ideas = {{hlist | |[[Gender performativity]]<!--|[[Sex and gender distinction#Monique Wittig|Butler's views!--Cannnot be sure if Butler is being sarcastic. May even be satirisingly parodying a popualar view-- on the sex-gender distinction]]<ref>{{cite book|last1=Butler|first1=Judith|title=Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity|url=|url-access=|date=1999|publisher=Routledge|location=New York|pages=10, 11|isbn=9780415924993|edition=2nd|quote=perhaps this construct called 'sex' is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was [[always already]] gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.}}</ref>-->}}
}}
{{Feminist philosophy sidebar}}

'''Judith Pamela Butler'''<ref name="Duignan 2018">{{cite encyclopedia |last=Duignan |first=Brian |year=2018 |title=Judith Butler |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Judith-Butler |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica |access-date=November 2, 2018}}</ref> (born February 24, 1956) is an American [[feminist]] philosopher and [[gender studies]] scholar whose work has influenced [[political philosophy]], ethics, and the fields of [[third-wave feminism]],<ref name="Rottenberg-2003">{{cite web |last=Rottenberg |first=Catherine |date=27 August 2003 |title=Judith Butler |url=http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5173 |access-date=18 June 2022 |publisher=The Literary Encyclopedia}}</ref> [[queer theory]],<ref name="Halberstam-2014">{{cite web|last=Halberstam|first=Jack|title=An audio overview of queer theory in English and Turkish by Jack Halberstam|url=https://archive.org/details/HalberstamQueerTheory-AnkaraTurkey|access-date=29 May 2014|date=2014-05-16}}</ref> and [[literary theory]].<ref name="kearns">{{cite journal |last=Kearns |first=Gerry |s2cid=144967142 |title=The Butler affair and the geopolitics of identity |journal=Environment and Planning D: Society and Space |year=2013 |volume=31 |issue=2 |pages=191–207 |doi=10.1068/d1713|bibcode=2013EnPlD..31..191K |url=http://eprints.maynoothuniversity.ie/7638/1/GK_Butler.pdf }}</ref>

In 1993, Butler joined the faculty in the Department of Rhetoric at the [[University of California, Berkeley]], where they{{efn|Butler uses [[she (pronoun)|she/her]] and [[singular they|they/them]] pronouns<ref name=NewStatesman2020-09-22a/> but in 2020 said that they prefer the latter.<ref name=DerTagesspiegel2020-05-13a/> This article uses they/them pronouns for consistency.}} became the Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program in [[Critical Theory]] in 1998. They also hold the [[Hannah Arendt]] Chair at the [[European Graduate School]] (EGS).<ref name="EGS-2019">{{cite web|title=Judith Butler, European Graduate School |url=http://egs.edu/faculty/judith-butler|access-date=14 July 2015}}</ref>

Butler is best known for their books ''[[Gender Trouble|Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity]]'' (1990) and ''Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex'' (1993), in which they challenge conventional, heteronormative notions of gender and develop their theory of [[gender performativity]]. This theory has had a major influence on feminist and queer scholarship.<ref>{{cite news |last=Thulin |first=Lesley |title=Feminist theorist Judith Butler rethinks kinship |url=http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2012/04/19/feminist-theorist-judith-butler-rethinks-kinship |access-date=9 October 2013 |newspaper=Columbia Spectator |date=19 April 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150925124558/http://columbiaspectator.com/2012/04/19/feminist-theorist-judith-butler-rethinks-kinship |archive-date=September 25, 2015 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Their work is often studied and debated in film studies courses emphasizing gender studies and performativity.

Butler has spoken on many contemporary political questions, including [[politics of Israel|Israeli politics]] and in support of [[LGBTQ rights]].<ref name="mcgill">{{cite web |title=Judith Butler |url=http://publications.mcgill.ca/reporter/2013/05/judith-butler/ |work=McGill Reporter |publisher=McGill |access-date=9 October 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150925091656/http://publications.mcgill.ca/reporter/2013/05/judith-butler/ |archive-date=September 25, 2015 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |title=Review of Judith Butler's "Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism" |url=http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/36335-parting-ways-jewishness-and-the-critique-of-zionism/ |last=Gans |first=Chaim |journal=Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews |date=December 13, 2013 |access-date=September 23, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150920005416/http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/36335-parting-ways-jewishness-and-the-critique-of-zionism/ |archive-date=September 20, 2015 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Butler |first=Judith |date=2023-10-13 |title=The Compass of Mourning |language=en |volume=45 |work=London Review of Books |issue=20 |url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n20/judith-butler/the-compass-of-mourning |access-date=2023-10-18 |issn=0260-9592}}</ref>

==Early life and education==
Judith Butler was born on February 24, 1956, in [[Cleveland, Ohio]],<ref name="Duignan 2018"/> to a family of [[Hungarian-Jewish]] and [[Russian-Jewish]] descent.<ref name=2001int>{{cite web | url=http://www.lolapress.org/elec2/artenglish/butl_e.htm | title=Interview with Judith Butler | author=Regina Michalik | work=Lola Press | date=May 2001 | access-date=March 1, 2010 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061219151830/http://www.lolapress.org/elec2/artenglish/butl_e.htm | archive-date=December 19, 2006 | url-status=dead | df=mdy-all }}</ref> Most of their maternal grandmother's family was murdered in the [[The Holocaust|Shoah]].<ref name=taught>{{cite journal|last=Udi|first=Aloni|title=Judith Butler: As a Jew, I was taught it was ethically imperative to speak up|journal=Haaretz|date=24 February 2010|url=http://www.haaretz.com/news/judith-butler-as-a-jew-i-was-taught-it-was-ethically-imperative-to-speak-up-1.266243|access-date=9 October 2013}}</ref> Butler's parents were practicing [[Reform Judaism|Reform Jews]]. Their mother was raised [[Orthodox Judaism|Orthodox]], eventually becoming [[Conservative Judaism|Conservative]] and then Reform, while their father was raised Reform. As a child and teenager, Butler attended both [[Hebrew school]] and special classes on [[Jewish ethics]], where they received their "first training in philosophy". Butler stated in a 2010 interview with ''[[Haaretz]]'' that they began the ethics classes at the age of 14, and that they were created as a form of punishment by Butler's Hebrew school's rabbi because they were "too talkative in class",<ref name=taught/>  and also often even accused of clowning.<ref name="Segal#">{{Cite web |title=Who's Afraid of Judith Butler? |last=Segal |first=Parul |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/06/judith-butler-profile |date=29 April 2024 |website=newyorker.com |access-date=18 February 2025}}</ref> Butler said they were "thrilled" by the idea of these tutorials. When asked what they wanted to study in these special sessions, Butler responded with three questions preoccupying them at the time: "Why was [[Baruch Spinoza|Spinoza]] [[Baruch Spinoza#Expulsion from the Jewish community|excommunicated]] from the synagogue? Could [[German Idealism]] be held accountable for [[Nazism]]? And how was one to understand [[existential theology]], including the work of [[Martin Buber]]?"<ref name="Segal#" /><ref>{{cite web|title=Judith Butler and Michael Roth: A Conversation at Wesleyan University's Center for Humanities| date=March 2013 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf4px4KyqbY|publisher=Wesleyan University}}</ref>

Butler attended [[Bennington College]] before transferring to [[Yale University]], where they studied philosophy and received a Bachelor of Arts in 1978 and a PhD in 1984.<ref name="tanner">{{cite web|url=http://grad.berkeley.edu/tanner/0405.shtml|title=Tanner Lecture on Human Values: 2004–2005 Lecture Series|date=March 2005|work=UC Berkeley|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041211053930/http://grad.berkeley.edu/tanner/0405.shtml|archive-date=2004-12-11|access-date=March 1, 2010}}</ref> Their studies fell primarily under the traditions of [[German idealism|German Idealism]] and [[Phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenology]],<ref>{{Cite web |title=Judith Butler: Hannah Arendt Chair and Professor of Philosophy at The European Graduate School / EGS. Biography |url=https://egs.edu/biography/judith-butler/ |access-date=February 28, 2024 |website=The European Graduate School}}</ref> and they spent one academic year at [[Heidelberg University]] as a [[Fulbright]] Scholar in 1979.<ref>{{cite book|last1=von Redecker|first1=Eva|title=Zur Aktualität von Judith Butler|year=2011|doi=10.1007/978-3-531-93350-4|isbn=978-3-531-16433-5}}</ref> After receiving their PhD, Butler revised their doctoral dissertation to produce their first book, entitled ''[[Subjects of Desire|Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth Century France]]'' (1987).<ref>{{Cite web |last=Duignan |first=Brian |date=February 20, 2024 |title=Judith Butler: American philosopher |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Judith-Butler |access-date=February 28, 2024 |website=Britannica}}</ref> Butler went on to teach at [[Wesleyan University]], [[George Washington University]], and [[Johns Hopkins University]] before joining the faculty of the [[University of California, Berkeley]], in 1993.<ref name="mellon">{{cite web|url=http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2009/03/19_butler.shtml|title=Judith Butler wins Mellon Award|author=Maclay, Kathleen|date=March 19, 2009|publisher=[[UC Berkeley]] News. Media Relations|access-date=March 1, 2010}}</ref> In 2002, they held the Spinoza Chair of Philosophy at the [[University of Amsterdam]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.uva.nl/en/disciplines/philosophy/home/components-centrecolumn/the-spinoza-chair.html|title=The Spinoza Chair – Philosophy – University of Amsterdam|last=Amsterdam|first=Universiteit van|website=Uva.nl|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141128205552/http://www.uva.nl/en/disciplines/philosophy/home/components-centrecolumn/the-spinoza-chair.html|archive-date=2014-11-28|access-date=December 4, 2017}}</ref> In addition, they joined the department of English and Comparative Literature at [[Columbia University]] as Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Visiting Professor of the Humanities in the spring semesters of 2012, 2013 and 2014 with the option of remaining as full-time faculty.<ref name="chronicle">{{cite news|url=http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/judith-butler-plans-to-move-from-berkeley-to-columbia-u/28217|title=Judith Butler to Join Columbia U. as a Visiting Professor.|date=November 20, 2010|newspaper=[[Chronicle of Higher Education]]|access-date=February 1, 2011|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101117020532/http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/judith-butler-plans-to-move-from-berkeley-to-columbia-u/28217|archive-date=2010-11-17}}</ref><ref name="capital">{{cite web |url=http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/culture/2010/11/760690/professor-trouble-post-structuralist-star-judith-butler-headed-columb |title=Professor trouble! Post-structuralist star Judith Butler headed to Columbia. |publisher=[[Capital New York]] |author=Woolfe, Zachary |location=New York, New York |date=October 10, 2010 |access-date=February 1, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110113174417/http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/culture/2010/11/760690/professor-trouble-post-structuralist-star-judith-butler-headed-columb |archive-date=January 13, 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://columbialion.com/blog/two-hours-in-the-shadow-of-judith-butler/ |title=Two hours in the shadow of Judith Butler &#124; the Lion |access-date=2014-09-20 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://archive.today/20140920064137/http://columbialion.com/blog/two-hours-in-the-shadow-of-judith-butler/ |archive-date=September 20, 2014 |df=mdy-all }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://socialdifference.columbia.edu/people/judith-butler|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121221031510/http://socialdifference.columbia.edu/people/judith-butler|url-status=dead|archive-date=December 21, 2012|title=Judith Butler – Center for the Study of Social Difference|date=December 21, 2012}}</ref>

Butler serves on the editorial or advisory board of several academic journals, including ''Janus Unbound: Journal of Critical Studies'',<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://journals.library.mun.ca/ojs/index.php/JU/about/editorialTeam |title=Editorial Team &#124; Janus Unbound: Journal of Critical Studies |website=journals.library.mun.ca |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241105134542/https://journals.library.mun.ca/index.php/JU/about/editorialTeam |archive-date=November 5, 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref> ''JAC: A Journal of Rhetoric, Culture, and Politics'' and ''[[Signs (journal)|Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society]].''<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.jaconlinejournal.com/editorialstaff.html|title=Editorial Board {{!}} Editorial Staff|website=Jaconlinejournal.com|access-date=2017-08-31|archive-date=July 3, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190703221953/http://www.jaconlinejournal.com/editorialstaff.html|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|url=http://signsjournal.org/about-signs/masthead/|title=Masthead|date=2012-08-22|work=Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society|access-date=2017-08-31|language=en-US}}</ref>

==Overview of major works==
{{Original research|discuss=Original research|date=June 2021}}

===''Performative Acts and Gender Constitution'' (1988)===
In the essay "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory," Judith Butler proposes that [[gender performativity|gender is performative]] – that is, gender is not so much a static identity or role, but rather comprises a set of acts which can evolve over time.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Butler |first=Judith |date=December 1988 |title=Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3207893 |journal=Theatre Journal |volume=40 |issue=4 |pages=519–520 |doi=10.2307/3207893 |jstor=3207893 |url-access=subscription }}</ref> Butler states that because gender identity is established through behavior, there is a possibility to construct different genders via different behaviors.<ref name="Jones2018">{{cite web | url = https://www.openculture.com/2018/02/judith-butler-on-gender-performativity.html | first = Josh | last = Jones | date = 7 February 2018 | title = Theorist Judith Butler Explains How Behavior Creates Gender: A Short Introduction to "Gender Performativity" | website = Open Culture | access-date = 8 July 2021}}</ref> <blockquote>"...if gender is instituted through acts which are internally discontinuous, then the appearance of substance is precisely that, a constructed identity, a performative accomplishment which the mundane social audience, including the actors themselves, come to believe and to perform in the mode of belief. If the ground of gender identity is the stylized repetition of acts through time, and not a seemingly seamless identity, then the possibilities of gender transformation are to be found in the arbitrary relation between such acts, in the possibility of a different sort of repeating, in the breaking or subversive repetition of that style."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Butler |first=Judith |title=Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory |date=December 1988 |publisher=The Johns Hopkins University Press |pages=520 |language=en}}</ref></blockquote>Butler concludes their essay with a personal reflection on the strengths and limitations of widespread feminist theories which function on a solely binary perception of gender. Butler critiques what they call the "reification" of sexual difference within a heterosexual framework, and articulates their concern with how this framework affects the accurate presentation (or lack thereof) of "femaleness" across a diverse array of experiences, including those of women.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Butler |first=Judith |date=December 1988 |title=Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3207893 |journal=Theatre Journal |volume=40 |issue=4 |pages=530 |doi=10.2307/3207893 |jstor=3207893 |url-access=subscription }}</ref><blockquote>"As a corporeal field of cultural play, gender is a basically innovative affair, although it is quite clear that there are strict punishments for contesting the script by performing out of turn or through unwarranted improvisations. Gender is not passively scripted on the body, and neither is it determined by nature, language, the symbolic, or the overwhelming history of patriarchy. Gender is what is put on, invariably, under constraint, daily and incessantly, with anxiety and pleasure, but if this continuous act is mistaken for a natural or linguistic given, power is relinquished to expand the cultural field bodily through subversive performances of various kinds."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Butler |first=Judith |date=December 1988 |title=Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3207893 |journal=Theatre Journal |volume=40 |issue=4 |pages=531 |doi=10.2307/3207893 |jstor=3207893 |url-access=subscription }}</ref></blockquote>Throughout this text, Butler derives influence from French philosophers such as [[Simone de Beauvoir]] and [[Maurice Merleau-Ponty]], particularly de Beauvoir's ''[[The Second Sex]]'' and Merleau-Ponty's "The Body in its Sexual Being." Butler also cites works by [[Gayle Rubin]], [[Mary Anne Warren]], and their own piece "Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir's ''Second Sex''" (1986), among others.

===''Gender Trouble'' (1990)===
{{Main|Gender Trouble}}

''Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity'' was first published in 1990, selling over 100,000 copies internationally, in multiple languages.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Loizidou|first=Elena|date=2007-04-11|title=Judith Butler: Ethics, Law, Politics|pages=1|doi=10.4324/9780203945186|isbn=978-0-203-94518-6}}</ref> Similar to "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution," ''Gender Trouble'' discusses the works of [[Sigmund Freud]], [[Simone de Beauvoir]], [[Julia Kristeva]], [[Jacques Lacan]], [[Luce Irigaray]], [[Monique Wittig]], [[Jacques Derrida]], and [[Michel Foucault]].<ref name="Direk-2020">{{cite book |last=Direk |first=Zeynep |title=Ontologies of Sex: Philosophy in Sexual Politics |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ep7pDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA112 |series=Reframing the boundaries |date=15 June 2020 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |pages=112 |isbn=978-1-78660-664-8 |oclc=1122448218 |chapter=4. Different Ontologies in Queer Theory}}</ref>

Butler offers a critique of the terms ''gender'' and ''sex'' as they have been used by feminists.<ref>{{cite book|title=Judith Butler| chapter=A Dictionary of Critical Theory |url=http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?entry=t306.e100&srn=1&ssid=460269119#FIRSTHIT|publisher=Oxford reference Online Premium|isbn=978-0-19-953291-9|date=January 2010|doi=10.1093/acref/9780199532919.001.0001}}</ref> Butler argues that feminism made a mistake in trying to make "women" a discrete, ahistorical group with common characteristics. Butler writes that this approach reinforces the binary view of gender relations. Butler believes that feminists should not try to define "women" and they also believe that feminists should "focus on providing an account of how power functions and shapes our understandings of womanhood not only in the society at large but also within the feminist movement."<ref>{{cite book|title=Feminist Perspectives on Sex and Gender|url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-gender/|publisher=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy|year=2017}}</ref> Finally, Butler aims to break the supposed links between sex and gender so that gender and desire can be "flexible, free floating and not caused by other stable factors" (David Gauntlett).<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Butler |first=Paul |date=2004 |title=Embracing AIDS: History, Identity, and Post-AIDS Discourse |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20866614 |journal=JAC |volume=24 |issue=1 |pages=102 |jstor=20866614 }}</ref> The idea of identity as free and flexible and gender as performative, not an essence, has become one of the foundations of [[queer theory]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=He |first=Li |date=2017 |title=The Construction of Gender: Judith Butler and Gender Performativity |url=https://www.atlantis-press.com/article/25878697.pdf |journal=Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research |volume=124 |pages=4 |via=Atlantis Press}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Browne |first=Evie |date=2019 |title=ALIGN Guide: Gender norms, LGBTQI issues and development |url=https://www.alignplatform.org/2-queer-theory-and-gender-norms |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240229031241/https://www.alignplatform.org/2-queer-theory-and-gender-norms#js-page |archive-date=February 29, 2024 |access-date=February 28, 2024 |website=Advancing Learning and Innovation on Gender Norms (ALIGN) |url-status=live }}</ref>

===''Imitation and Gender Insubordination'' (1991)===
''Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories'' is a collection of writings of gay and lesbian social theorists. Butler's contribution argues that no transparent revelation is afforded by using the terms "gay" or "lesbian" yet there is a political imperative to do so.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Imitation and Gender Insubordination|url=http://artsites.ucsc.edu/faculty/gustafson/FILM%20165A.W11/film%20165A%5BW11%5D%20readings%20/Judith_Butler__Imitation_and_Gender_Insubordination.pdf|access-date=November 29, 2021|archive-date=April 1, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220401031510/http://artsites.ucsc.edu/faculty/gustafson/FILM%20165A.W11/film%20165A%5BW11%5D%20readings%20/Judith_Butler__Imitation_and_Gender_Insubordination.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref> Butler employs "the concepts of play/performance, drag, and imitation" to describe the formation of gender and sexuality as continually created subjectivities always at risk of dissolution from non-performance."<ref>{{Cite web|last=Ellis|first=Jason W.|date=2014-04-14|title=Recovered Writing, PhD in English, Queer Studies, Presentation on Judith Butler's "Imitation and Gender Insubordination" and Introduction to Bodies That Matter Feb. 6, 2008|url=https://dynamicsubspace.net/2014/04/14/recovered-writing-phd-in-english-queer-studies-presentation-on-judith-butlers-imitation-and-gender-insubordination-and-introduction-to-bodies-that-matter-feb-6-2008/|access-date=2021-11-29|website=Dynamic Subspace|language=en}}</ref>

===''Bodies That Matter'' (1993)===
''Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex'' seeks to clear up readings and supposed misinterpretations of performativity that view the enactment of sex/gender as a daily choice.<ref>For example, {{Cite journal | last=Jeffreys | first=Sheila | author-link=Sheila Jeffreys | title = The queer disappearance of lesbians: Sexuality in the academy | journal = [[Women's Studies International Forum]] | volume = 17 | issue = 5 | pages = 459–472 | doi = 10.1016/0277-5395(94)00051-4 | date = September–October 1994 }}</ref> As such, Butler aims to answer questions of this vein that may have been raised from their previous work ''Gender Trouble''. Butler emphasizes the role of repetition in performativity, making use of [[Jacques Derrida|Derrida]]'s theory of iterability, which is a form of [[citationality]]:<blockquote>Performativity cannot be understood outside of a process of iterability, a regularized and constrained repetition of norms. And this repetition is not performed ''by'' a subject; this repetition is what enables a subject and constitutes the temporal condition for the subject. This iterability implies that 'performance' is not a singular 'act' or event, but a ritualized production, a ritual reiterated under and through constraint, under and through the force of prohibition and taboo, with the threat of ostracism and even death controlling and compelling the shape of the production, but not, I will insist, determining it fully in advance.<ref>{{cite book |last=Butler |first=Judith |url=https://archive.org/details/bodiesthatmatter00butl |title=Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" |publisher=Routledge |year=1993 |isbn=978-0-415-90365-3 |location=New York |page=[https://archive.org/details/bodiesthatmatter00butl/page/95 95] |author-link=Judith Butler |url-access=registration}}</ref></blockquote>Butler also explores how gender can be understood not only as a performance, but also as a "constitutive constraint," or constructed character. They ask how this conceptualization of an individual's gender contributes to notions of bodily intelligibility, or comprehension, by other individuals. Butler continues to discuss bodily intelligibility by means of sex as a "materialized" entity, upon which cultural, collective ideals of gender can be built. From this angle, Butler interrogates value conscription upon various bodies as determined theories and practices of heterosexual predominance.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Butler |first=Judith |title=Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex |date=1993 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=9780415610155 |edition=1st |location=New York, NY |publication-date=May 13, 2011 |pages=x-xii |language=en}}</ref> <blockquote>If gender consists of the social meanings that sex assumes, then sex does not accrue social meanings as additive properties but, rather, is replaced by the social meanings it takes on; sex is relinquished in the course of that assumption, and gender emerges, not as a term in a continued relationship of opposition to sex, but as the term which absorbs and displaces "sex," the mark of its full substantiation into gender or what, from a materialist point of view, might constitute a full de-substantiation.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Butler |first=Judith |title=Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex |date=1993 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=9780415610155 |edition=1st |location=New York, NY |publication-date=May 13, 2011 |pages=5 |language=en}}</ref></blockquote>While continuing to draw upon sources such as those of [[Plato]], [[Luce Irigaray|Irigaray]], [[Jacques Lacan|Lacan]], and [[Sigmund Freud|Freud]] (as they did for ''Gender Trouble''), Butler also draws upon pieces of documentary film and literature for ''Bodies That Matter''. Such pieces include the film ''[[Paris Is Burning (film)|Paris is Burning]]'', short stories by [[Willa Cather]], and the novel ''[[Passing (novel)|Passing]]'' by Nella Larsen.

===''Excitable Speech'' (1997)===
{{further|Performativity#Judith Butler}}

In ''Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative'', Butler surveys the problems of [[hate speech]] and censorship. They argue that censorship is difficult to evaluate, and that in some cases it may be useful or even necessary, while in others it may be worse than tolerance.<ref name="Jagger">{{cite book |last=Jagger|first=Gill |title=Judith Butler: Sexual politics, social change and the power of the performative |url=https://archive.org/details/judithbutlersexu00jagg|url-access=limited|year=2008 |publisher=Routledge |location=New York | pages=[https://archive.org/details/judithbutlersexu00jagg/page/n121 115]–8 |isbn=978-0-415-21975-4 |ol=OL10187608M |lccn=2007032458}}</ref>

Butler argues that hate speech exists retrospectively, only after being declared such by state authorities. In this way, the state reserves for itself the power to define hate speech and, conversely, the limits of acceptable discourse. In this connection, Butler criticizes feminist legal scholar [[Catharine MacKinnon]]'s argument against pornography for its unquestioning acceptance of the state's power to censor.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative|last=Butler|first=Judith|publisher=Routledge|year=1997|isbn=978-0-415-91588-5|location=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/excitablespeechp0000butl/page/22 22]|quote="Similarly, MacKinnon's appeal to the state to construe pornography as performative speech and, hence, as the injurious conduct of representation, does not settle the theoretical question of the relation between representation and conduct, but collapses the distinction in order to enhance the power of state intervention over graphic sexual representation."|url=https://archive.org/details/excitablespeechp0000butl/page/22}}</ref>

Deploying [[Michel Foucault|Foucault]]'s argument from the first volume of ''[[The History of Sexuality]]'', Butler states that any attempt at censorship, legal or otherwise, necessarily propagates the very language it seeks to forbid.<ref>{{cite book |last=Butler |first=Judith |author-link=Judith Butler |title=Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative |url=https://archive.org/details/excitablespeechp0000butl |url-access=registration |year=1997 |publisher=Routledge |location=New York | pages=[https://archive.org/details/excitablespeechp0000butl/page/129 129–33] |isbn=978-0-415-91588-5}}</ref> As Foucault argues, for example, the strict sexual mores of 19th-century Western Europe did nothing but amplify the discourse of sexuality they sought to control.<ref>For example, {{cite book |last=Foucault |first=Michel |author-link=Michel Foucault |others=Trans. Robert Hurley |title=The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. Vol 1. |url=https://archive.org/details/historysexuality02fouc |url-access=limited |orig-year=1976 |year=1990 |publisher=Vintage |location=New York | page=[https://archive.org/details/historysexuality02fouc/page/n27 23] |quote=A censorship of sex? There was installed [since the 17th century] rather an apparatus for producing an ever greater quantity of discourse about sex, capable of functioning and taking effect in its very economy.}}</ref> Extending this argument using [[Derrida]] and [[Jacques Lacan|Lacan]], Butler says that censorship is primitive to language, and that the linguistic "I" is a mere effect of a primitive censorship. In this way, Butler questions the possibility of any genuinely oppositional discourse; "If speech depends upon censorship, then the principle that one might seek to oppose is at once the formative principle of oppositional speech".<ref>{{cite book |last=Butler |first=Judith |author-link=Judith Butler |title=Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative |url=https://archive.org/details/excitablespeechp0000butl |url-access=registration |year=1997 |publisher=Routledge |location=New York | page=[https://archive.org/details/excitablespeechp0000butl/page/140 140] |isbn=978-0-415-91588-5}}</ref>

===''Precarious Life'' (2004)===

''Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence'' opens a new line in Judith Butler's work that has had a great impact on their subsequent thought, especially on books like ''Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?'' (2009) or ''Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly'' (2015), as well as on other contemporary thinkers.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Lorey |first1=Isabell |author-link=Isabell Lorey|title=State of Insecurity: Government of the Precarious |date=2015 |publisher=Verso Books |location=London |isbn=9781781685969}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Puar |first1=Jasbir K. |author-link=Jasbir Puar|title=Terrorist Assemblages Homonationalism in Queer Times |date=2007 |publisher=Duke University Press |location=Durham, NC |isbn=9780822390442}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Han |first1=Clara |title=Precarity, precariousness, and vulnerability |journal=Annual Review of Anthropology |date=2018 |volume=47 |issue=47 |pages=331–343 |doi=10.1146/annurev-anthro-102116-041644 |s2cid=149738954 |doi-access=free }}</ref> In this book, Butler deals with issues of precarity, vulnerability, grief and contemporary political violence in the face of the [[War on terror]] and the realities of [[Guantanamo Bay detention camp|prisoners at Guantanamo Bay]] and similar detention centers. Drawing on Foucault, they characterize the form of power at work in these places of "indefinite detention" as a convergence of [[sovereignty]] and [[governmentality]]. The "[[state of exception]]" deployed here is in fact more complex than the one pointed out by [[Giorgio Agamben|Agamben]] in his ''Homo Sacer'', since the government is in a more ambiguous relation to law —it may comply with it or suspend it, depending on its interests, and this is itself a tool of the state to produce its own sovereignty.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |title=Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence |date=2004 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn= 978-1-84467-544-9 |language=en|pages=55, 61–62, 66, 83}}</ref> Butler also points towards problems in [[international law]] treatises like the [[Geneva Conventions]]. In practice, these only protect people who belong to (or act in the name of) a recognized state, and therefore are helpless in situations of abuse toward [[Statelessness|stateless people]], people who do not enjoy a recognized citizenship or people who are labelled "terrorists", and therefore understood as acting on their own behalf as irrational "killing machines" that need to be held captive due to their "dangerousness".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |title=Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence |date=2004 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn= 978-1-84467-544-9 |language=en|pages=86–87, 73–74, 76}}</ref>

Butler also writes here on vulnerability and precariousness as intrinsic to the human condition. This is due to our inevitable interdependency from other precarious subjects, who are never really "complete" or autonomous but instead always "dispossessed" on the Other. This is manifested in shared experiences like [[grief]] and loss, that can form the basis for a recognition of our shared human (vulnerable) condition.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |title=Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence |date=2004 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn= 978-1-84467-544-9 |language=en|pages=20}}</ref> However, not every loss can be mourned in the same way, and in fact not every life can be conceived of as such (as situated in a condition common to ours).<ref>{{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |title=Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence |date=2004 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn= 978-1-84467-544-9 |language=en|pages=32–33}}</ref> Through a critical engagement with [[Emmanuel Levinas|Levinas]], they will explore how certain representations prevent lives from being considered worthy of being lived or taken into account, precluding the mourning of certain Others, and with that the recognition of them and their losses as equally human.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |title=Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence |date=2004 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn= 978-1-84467-544-9 |language=en|pages=147}}</ref> This preoccupation with the dignifying or dehumanizing role of practices of framing and representations will constitute one of the central elements of ''Frames of War'' (2009).

===''Undoing Gender'' (2004)===
{{Main|Undoing Gender}}
''Undoing Gender'' collects Butler's reflections on gender, sex, sexuality, psychoanalysis and the medical treatment of intersex people for a more general readership than many of their other books. Butler revisits and refines their notion of performativity and focuses on the question of undoing "restrictively normative conceptions of sexual and gendered life".{{Citation needed|date=March 2023}}

Butler discusses how gender is performed without one being conscious of it, but says that it does not mean this performativity is "automatic or mechanical". They argue that we have desires that do not originate from our personhood, but rather, from social norms. The writer also debates our notions of "human" and "less-than-human" and how these culturally imposed ideas can keep one from having a "viable life" as the biggest concerns are usually about whether a person will be accepted if their desires differ from normality. Butler states that one may feel the need of being recognized in order to live, but that at the same time, the conditions to be recognized make life "unlivable". The writer proposes an interrogation of such conditions so that people who resist them may have more possibilities of living.<ref>Butler, Judith (2004). Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge</ref>

In Butler's discussion of intersex issues and people, Butler addresses the case of [[David Reimer]], a person whose sex was medically [[Sex assignment#Assignment in cases of infants with intersex traits, or cases of trauma|reassigned]] from male to female after a botched [[circumcision]] at eight months of age. Reimer was "made" female by doctors, but later in life identified as "really" male, married and became a stepfather to his wife's three children, and went on to tell his story in ''[[As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl]]'', which he wrote with [[John Colapinto]]. Reimer died by suicide in 2004.<ref>{{cite magazine | url = http://slate.com/id/2101678/ | title = Gender Gap: What were the real reasons behind David Reimer's suicide? | last = Colapinto | first = J | author-link = John Colapinto | magazine = [[Slate (magazine)|Slate]] | date = June 3, 2004 | access-date = February 13, 2009 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110916170908/http://www.slate.com/id/2101678/ | archive-date = September 16, 2011 | url-status = dead }}</ref>

===''Giving an Account of Oneself'' (2005)===
In ''Giving an Account of Oneself'', Butler develops an ethics based on the opacity of the subject to itself; in other words, the limits of self-knowledge. Primarily borrowing from [[Theodor Adorno]], [[Michel Foucault]], [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], [[Jean Laplanche]], [[Adriana Cavarero]] and [[Emmanuel Levinas]], Butler develops a theory of the formation of the subject. Butler theorizes the subject in relation to the social&nbsp;– a community of others and their norms – which is beyond the control of the subject it forms, as precisely the very condition of that subject's formation, the resources by which the subject becomes recognizably human, a grammatical "I", in the first place.

Butler accepts the claim that if the subject is opaque to itself the limitations of its free ethical responsibility and obligations are due to the limits of narrative, presuppositions of language and projection.

{{blockquote|You may think that I am in fact telling a story about the prehistory of the subject, one that I have been arguing cannot be told. There are two responses to this objection. (1) That there is no final or adequate narrative reconstruction of the prehistory of the speaking "I" does not mean we cannot narrate it; it only means that at the moment when we narrate we become speculative philosophers or fiction writers. (2) This prehistory has never stopped happening and, as such, is not a prehistory in any chronological sense. It is not done with, over, relegated to a past, which then becomes part of a causal or narrative reconstruction of the self. On the contrary, that prehistory interrupts the story I have to give of myself, makes every account of myself partial and failed, and constitutes, in a way, my failure to be fully accountable for my actions, my final "irresponsibility," one for which I may be forgiven only because I could not do otherwise. This not being able to do otherwise is our common predicament (page 78).}}

Instead Butler argues for an ethics based precisely on the limits of self-knowledge as the limits of responsibility itself. Any concept of responsibility which demands the full transparency of the self to itself, an entirely accountable self, necessarily does violence to the opacity which marks the constitution of the self it addresses. The scene of address by which responsibility is enabled is always already a relation between subjects who are variably opaque to themselves and to each other. The ethics that Butler envisions is therefore one in which the responsible self knows the limits of its knowing, recognizes the limits of its capacity to give an account of itself to others, and respects those limits as symptomatically human. To take seriously one's opacity to oneself in ethical deliberation means then to critically interrogate the social world in which one comes to be human in the first place and which remains precisely that which one cannot know about oneself. In this way, Butler locates social and political critique at the core of ethical practice.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Butler|first=Judith|s2cid=143558617|date=2001|title=Giving an Account of Oneself|journal=Diacritics|volume=31|issue=4|pages=22–40|jstor=1566427|doi=10.1353/dia.2004.0002}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Butler, Judith|title=Giving an account of oneself|date=2005|publisher=Fordham University Press|isbn=978-0-8232-3523-0|edition=1st|location=New York|lccn=2005017141|oclc=191818345|ol=OL23241953M}}</ref>

=== ''Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly'' (2015) ===
{{Distinguish|Performative activism}}
In ''Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly'', Butler discusses the power of public gatherings, considering what they signify and how they work.<ref name="Notes-Assembly">{{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |title=Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly |date=2015 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-49556-2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hgRuCwAAQBAJ |language=en}}</ref> They use this framework to analyze the power and possibilities of protests, such as the [[Black Lives Matter]] protests regarding the deaths of [[Shooting of Michael Brown|Michael Brown]] and [[Killing of Eric Garner|Eric Garner]] in 2014.

=== ''The Force of Nonviolence'' (2020) ===
In ''The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind'', Butler connects the ideologies of nonviolence and the political struggle for social equality. They review the traditional understanding of "nonviolence," stating that it "is often misunderstood as a passive practice that emanates from a calm region of the soul, or as an individualist ethical relation to existing forms of power."<ref name="Force of Nonviolence">{{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |title=The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind |date=2020 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78873-279-6 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-n6WDwAAQBAJ |language=en}}</ref> Instead of this understanding, Butler argues that "nonviolence is an ethical position found in the midst of the political field."<ref name="Force of Nonviolence" />

=== ''Who's Afraid of Gender?'' (2024) ===
{{Main|Who's Afraid of Gender?}}
In ''Who's Afraid of Gender?'', Butler explores the roots of current anti-trans rhetoric, which they define as a "phantasm" that aligns itself with emerging authoritarian movements.<ref name="Rottenberg-2003" /> Butler was inspired to write this book after being attacked in 2017 in Brazil while speaking, at least one of whom shouted at Butler, saying "Take your ideology to hell!"<ref name="Halberstam-2014" /> Butler is interested in the literal demonization of [[gender]] by analyzing the historical context of the [[anti-gender movement]].<ref name="EGS-2019" /> The book has been described as "the most accessible of their books so far, an intervention meant for a wide audience".<ref>{{cite news |last1=Mackay |first1=Finn |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/13/whos-afraid-of-gender-by-judith-butler-review-the-gender-theorist-goes-mainstream |access-date=2 July 2024 |title=Who's Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler review – the gender theorist goes mainstream |work=[[The Guardian]] |date=13 March 2024}}</ref>

==Reception==
Butler's work has been influential in feminist and queer theory, [[cultural studies]], and [[continental philosophy]].<ref name=aranguiz>{{cite journal|last=Aránguiz|first=Francisco|author2=Carmen Luz Fuentes-Vásquez|author3=Manuela Mercado|author4=Allison Ramay|author5=Juan Pablo Vilches|title=Meaningful "Protests" in the Kitchen: An Interview with Judith Butler|journal=White Rabbit: English Studies in Latin America|date=June 2011|volume=1|url=http://www.whiterabbitesla.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Interview-with-Judith-Butler1.pdf|access-date=9 October 2013|url-status=usurped|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150403131535/http://www.whiterabbitesla.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Interview-with-Judith-Butler1.pdf|archive-date=April 3, 2015|df=mdy-all}}</ref> Their contribution to a range of other disciplines, such as [[psychoanalysis]],{{efn|Butler call themselves "creature of psychoanalysis". "It’s where I learned how to read. I was given permission to live and to love, which is what I do in my work. It was a wise and generous gift, which allowed me to move forward with my life."<ref name="Segal#" />}} literary, film, and [[performance studies]] as well as visual arts, has also been significant.<ref name="kearns" /> Their theory of gender performativity as well as their conception of "critically queer" have heavily influenced understandings of gender and queer identity in the academic world, and have shaped and mobilized various kinds of political activism, particularly queer activism, internationally.<ref name="aranguiz" /><ref>{{cite web|last=Butler|first=Judith|title=Judith Butler's Statement on the Queer Palestinian Activists Tour|url=http://www.alqaws.org/q/en/content/judith-butlers-statement-queer-palestinian-activists-tour-0|publisher=alQaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society|access-date=9 October 2013|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131023060728/http://www.alqaws.org/q/en/content/judith-butlers-statement-queer-palestinian-activists-tour-0|archive-date=October 23, 2013|df=mdy-all}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Butler|first=Judith|title=Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street|url=http://www.eipcp.net/transversal/1011/butler/en|publisher=European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies (eipcp)|access-date=9 October 2013|date=September 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181206001640/http://www.eipcp.net/transversal/1011/butler/en|archive-date=December 6, 2018|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Butler|first=Judith|title=Queer Alliance and Anti-War Politics|url=http://www.wri-irg.org/node/12105|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140808062548/http://wri-irg.org/node/12105|url-status=dead|archive-date=2014-08-08|publisher=War Resisters' International (WRI)|access-date=9 October 2013|date=May 2010}}</ref> Butler's work has also entered into contemporary debates on the teaching of gender, gay parenting, and the depathologization of transgender people.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Saar|first=Tsafi|url=https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-fifty-shades-of-gay-amalia-ziv-explains-why-her-son-calls-her-dad-1.5230870|title=Fifty Shades of Gay: Amalia Ziv Explains Why Her Son Calls Her 'Dad'|date=2013-02-21|work=Haaretz|language=en|url-access=registration}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Lee |first1=Rosa |editor1-last=Gleeson |editor1-first=Jules Joanne |editor2-last=O'Rourke |editor2-first=Elle |title=Transgender Marxism |date=2021 |publisher=Pluto Press |location=London |isbn=978-0-7453-4166-8 |pages=62–70 |chapter=Judith Butler's Scientific Revolution: Foundations for a Transsexual Marxism}}</ref>

Some academics and political activists see in Butler a departure from the sex/gender dichotomy and a non-essentialist conception of gender—along with an insistence that power helps [[Subjectification|form the subject]]—an idea whose introduction purportedly brought new insights to feminist and queer praxis, thought, and studies.<ref>{{cite web|last=Rottenberg|first=Catherine|title=Judith Butler|url=http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5173|publisher=The Literary Encyclopedia|access-date=9 October 2013|date=27 August 2003}}</ref> [[Darin Barney]] of [[McGill University]] wrote that:
{{blockquote|Butler's work on gender, sex, sexuality, queerness, feminism, bodies, political speech and ethics has changed the way scholars all over the world think, talk and write about identity, subjectivity, power and politics. It has also changed the lives of countless people whose bodies, genders, sexualities and desires have made them subject to violence, exclusion and oppression.<ref>{{cite news|last=Barney|first=Darin|title=In Defense of Judith Butler|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/darin-barney/in-defense-of-judith-butler-mcgill_b_3346589.html|work=Huffington Post|access-date=9 October 2013}}</ref>}}

Postmodern feminism's major departure from other branches of feminism is perhaps the argument that [[sex]] is itself [[social construction|constructed]] through [[discourse|language]], a view notably propounded in Butler's 1990 book, ''[[Gender Trouble]]''.<ref>Gutting, G. (ed.), ''The Cambridge Companion to Foucault'' (2002), p. 389.</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Digeser |first1=Peter |title=Performativity Trouble: Postmodern Feminism and Essential Subjects |journal=Political Research Quarterly |date=September 1994 |volume=47 |issue=3 |pages=655–673 |doi=10.1177/106591299404700305 |s2cid=144691426 }}</ref> Consequently, Butler's work is passible of criticism by [[Age of Enlightenment|modernist]] and [[Factual relativism|anti-relativist]] [[Criticism of postmodernism|critics of postmodernism]] who deplore the idea that categories spoken about in the natural sciences (e.g., sex) are socially constructed.

In 1998, [[Denis Dutton]]'s journal ''[[Philosophy and Literature]]'' awarded Butler first prize in its fourth annual "Bad Writing Competition", which set out to "celebrate bad writing from the most stylistically lamentable passages found in scholarly books and articles", which Butler [[Denis Dutton#Criticism of academic prose|responded to]].<ref name="bad">{{cite web| url=http://denisdutton.com/bad_writing.htm| first=Denis| last=Dutton| author-link=Denis Dutton| year=1998| title=Bad Writing Contest| access-date=September 14, 2009| archive-date=March 4, 2016| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304022732/http://denisdutton.com/bad_writing.htm| url-status=dead}}</ref>{{efn|Butler's cited entry in a 1997 issue of the scholarly journal ''[[Diacritics (journal)|Diacritics]]'' ran thus:{{blockquote|The move from a [[Structuralism|structuralist]] account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively [[Homology (sociology)|homologous]] ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of [[Althusser]]ian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.}}}}

Some critics have accused Butler of elitism due to their difficult prose style, while others state that Butler reduces gender to "discourse" or promotes<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Bettcher |first=Talia |title=Feminist Perspectives on Trans Issues |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-trans/ |journal=[[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]] |year=2020 |quote=While Butler's theory was initially viewed by some as a kind of gender voluntarism, it is clear that this is very far from her actual view, further refined in ''Bodies that Matter'' (1993). Butler clarifies that instead of a kind of voluntary theatricality donned and doffed by a pre-existing agent, gender performance is constitutive of the agent itself.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Phillips |first=Adam |chapter=Keeping It Moving: Commentary on Judith Butler's "Melancholy Gender / Refused Identification" |title=The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection |publisher=[[Stanford University Press]] |year=1997 |isbn=0-8047-2811-9 |editor-last=Butler |editor-first=Judith |pages=157 |language=en |quote=From a clinical point of view, Butler's initial political voluntarism in ''Gender Trouble'' would have made analysts wary. |author-link=Adam Phillips (psychologist)}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Probyn |first=Elspeth |author-link=Elspeth Probyn |title=Lesbians in Space: Gender, Sex, and the Structure of Missing |journal=[[Gender, Place & Culture]] |page=79 |doi=10.1080/09663699550022107 |quote=[In Butler's eyes] we can have whatever type of gender we want ... and that we wear our gender as drag |via=[[Taylor & Francis]]}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Heinämaa |first=Sara |date=1997 |title=What Is a Woman? Butler and Beauvoir on the Foundations of the Sexual Difference |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3810249 |journal=[[Hypatia (journal)|Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy]] |volume=12 |issue=1 |pages=20–39 |doi=10.1111/j.1527-2001.1997.tb00169.x |jstor=3810249 |s2cid=143621442 |issn=0887-5367 |quote=The So-Called Voluntarist Theory of Gender. I will proceed backwards, from present to past, from critiques and interpretations to Beauvoir's own writing. My starting point is the recent criticism presented by Judith Butler in her ''Gender Trouble'' (1990a). In this work, Butler contrasts her own "performative theory of gender" to Beauvoir's ...<br />... the notion that Butler presented a voluntarist theory of gender. ... Judith Butler bases her voluntarist reading on [[Michèle Le Dœuff|Le Doeuff]]'s work. |url-access=subscription }} <nowiki>[[fi:Sara Heinamaa]]</nowiki></ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Boucher |first=Geoff |title=The Politics of Performativity: A Critique of Judith Butler |url=https://www.parrhesiajournal.org/parrhesia01/parrhesia01_boucher.pdf |journal=[[Parrhesia (journal)|Parrhesia]] |quote=In the revised introduction to ''Gender Trouble'' (1999), however, Butler ... repudiate[s] voluntarist interpretations of her work. ... Butler says the [[Agency (philosophy)|agency]] in question is not that of the [[subject (philosophy)|subject]] (as in [[individualist]]-voluntarist accounts), but of language itself, whereby we can locate "agency within the possibility of a variation on ... [linguistic] repetition" {Butler, 1999 #6@145}.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Durmuş |first=Deniz |year=2022 |title=Tracing the Influence of Simone de Beauvoir in Judith Butler's Work |journal=Philosophies |volume=7 |issue=Current French Philosophy in Difficult Times |page=137 |doi=10.3390/philosophies7060137 |quote=Butler's theory of performative gender has been criticized for being a voluntarist theory. [[Elspeth Probyn]], for example, takes Butler as saying that gender construction is a totally voluntary act. Hence, Probyn argues that according to Butler's theory of gender performativity 'we can have whatever type of gender we want' ... Butler herself does not criticize [[Simone de Beauvoir|Beauvoir]] for ... a voluntaristic framework ... [Butler] mentions Michele Le Doeuff and other feminists who accuse of Beauvoir for resurrecting 'a classical form of voluntarism which insidiously blames the victims of oppression for 'choosing' their situation'. |via=[[MDPI]] |doi-access=free}}</ref> a form of gender {{annotated link|Voluntarism (philosophy)|voluntarism}}. [[Susan Bordo]], for example, has argued that Butler reduces gender to language and has contended that the body is a major part of gender, in opposition to Butler's conception of gender as performative.<ref>Hekman, Susan (1998). "Material Bodies." ''Body and Flesh: a Philosophical Reader'' ed. by Donn Welton. Blackwell Publishing. pp. 61–70.</ref> A particularly vocal critic has been feminist [[Martha Nussbaum]], who has argued that Butler misreads [[J.&nbsp;L. Austin]]'s idea of [[performative utterance]], makes erroneous legal claims, forecloses an essential site of resistance by repudiating pre-cultural agency, and provides no "normative theory of social justice and human dignity."<ref name="Professor of Parody">{{Cite news|last=Nussbaum|first=Martha C.|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/150687/professor-parody|title=The Professor of Parody|date=February 22, 1999|magazine=The New Republic|access-date=June 22, 2024|issn=0028-6583|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20001212223500/http://www.tnr.com/archive/0299/022299/nussbaum022299.html|archive-date=December 12, 2000|url-status=dead|url-access=limited}}</ref> Finally, [[Nancy Fraser]]'s critique of Butler was part of a famous exchange between the two theorists. Fraser has suggested that Butler's focus on performativity distances them from "everyday ways of talking and thinking about ourselves.&nbsp;... Why should we use such a self-distancing idiom?"<ref>Fraser, Nancy (1995). "False Antitheses." In Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell and Nancy Fraser (eds.), ''Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange''. Routledge. p. 67.</ref> Butler responded to criticisms in the preface to the 1999-edition ''Gender Trouble'' by asking suggestively whether there is "a value to be derived from...experiences of linguistic difficulty."<ref name=interview2001>{{cite journal|last1=Breen|first1=Margaret Soenser|last2=Blumenfeld|first2=Warren J.|last3=Baer|first3=Susanna|last4=Brookey|first4=Robert Alan|last5=Hall|first5=Lynda|last6=Kirby|first6=Vicky|last7=Miller|first7=Diane Helene|last8=Shail|first8=Robert|last9=Wilson|first9=Natalie|s2cid=141316680|journal=International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies|volume=6|issue=1/2|year=2001|pages=7–23|issn=1566-1768|doi=10.1023/A:1010133821926|title="There Is a Person Here": An Interview with Judith Butler}}</ref>

More recently, several critics — such as semiotician [[Viviane Namaste]]<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Namaste|first1=Viviane|title=Undoing Theory: The "Transgender Question" and the Epistemic Violence of Anglo-American Feminist Theory|journal=Hypatia|volume=24|issue=3|year=2009|pages=11–32|issn=0887-5367|doi=10.1111/j.1527-2001.2009.01043.x|s2cid=145627130}}</ref>
— have criticised Judith Butler's ''Undoing Gender'' for under-emphasizing the intersectional aspects of gender-based violence. For example, Timothy Laurie notes that Butler's use of phrases like "gender politics" and "gender violence" in relation to assaults on transgender individuals in the United States can "[scour] a landscape filled with class and labour relations, racialized urban stratification, and complex interactions between sexual identity, sexual practices and sex work", and produce instead "a clean surface on which struggles over 'the human' are imagined to play out".<ref>{{Citation | title= The Ethics of Nobody I Know: Gender and the Politics of Description | first= Timothy | last= Laurie | journal=Qualitative Research Journal | volume= 14 | issue= 1 | page= 72 | year= 2014 | url= https://www.academia.edu/6262250| doi= 10.1108/QRJ-03-2014-0011 | hdl= 10453/44221 | hdl-access= free }}</ref>

German feminist [[Alice Schwarzer]] speaks of Butler's "radical intellectual games" that would not change how society classifies and treats a woman; thus, by eliminating female and male identity Butler would have abolished the discourse about sexism in the queer community. Schwarzer also accuses Butler of remaining silent about the oppression of women and homosexuals in the Islamic world, while readily exercising their right to [[Same-sex marriage|same-sex-marriage]] in the United States; instead, Butler would sweepingly defend [[Islam]], including [[Islamism]], from critics.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.emma.de/artikel/eine-antwort-auf-butler-334719|title=Weiberzank – oder Polit-Kontroverse?|last=Alice Schwarzer schreibt|date=29 August 2017|website=Emma|language=de|access-date=2017-12-04}}</ref>

EGS philosophy professor [[Geoffrey Bennington]], translator for many of Derrida's books, criticised Butler's introduction to the 1997 translation of Derrida's 1967 ''[[Of Grammatology]]''.{{efn|He criticised it for "vagueness, inaccuracies, misunderstandings, and plain errors", such as an "extraordinarily inaccurate account of [[Ferdinand de Saussure|Saussure]]'s notion of the sign", doing Derrida and original preface-writer [[Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak]] "a real disservice".<ref>{{Cite web |date=2016-03-20 |title=Los Angeles Review of Books |url=https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/embarrassing-ourselves/ |access-date=2023-02-08 |website=[[Los Angeles Review of Books]] |language=en}}</ref>}}

===Non-academic===
[[File:Manifestantes protestam contra e a favor de filósofa Judith Butler em São Paulo (38245843031).jpg|thumb|[[São Paulo]], Brazil. An ''[[Inside Higher Ed]]'' article notes that before a democracy conference in Brazil "Butler was burned in effigy as police kept groups of protesters – for and against Butler – apart. A pink bra was attached to the figure that was burned". Some protesters "held crosses and Brazilian flags in the air."<ref name=ihe />|left]] Before a 2017 democracy conference in Brazil,<ref name=ihe>{{cite web | url=https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/11/13/judith-butler-discusses-being-burned-effigy-and-protested-brazil | title=Judith Butler discusses being burned in effigy and protested in Brazil
| date=November 13, 2017
|publisher=[[Inside Higher Ed]]}}</ref> Butler was burnt in [[effigy]].<ref name=WhyBacklash /><ref>{{Cite web |last=Aragão |first=Alexandre |title=Please Watch This Insane Footage Of Judith Butler Being Called A Witch In Brazil |url=https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexandrearagao/judith-butler-brazil |access-date=2023-02-15 |website=[[BuzzFeed News]] |date=November 8, 2017 |language=en}}</ref><ref name="Guardian interview"/><ref>{{Cite web |date=2020-02-24 |title=Ep. 236: Judith Butler Interview: "The Force of Nonviolence" {{!}} The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast {{!}} A Philosophy Podcast and Blog |url=https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2020/02/24/ep236-butler-nonviolence/ |access-date=2023-02-15 |language=en-US |website=[[The Partially Examined Life]] }}</ref>

[[Bruno Perreau]] has written that Butler was literally depicted as an "[[antichrist]]", both because of their gender and their Jewish identity, the fear of minority politics and critical studies being expressed through fantasies of a corrupted body.<ref>Bruno Perreau, Queer Theory: The French Response, Stanford University Press, 2016, p. 58-59 and 75–81.</ref>

==Political activism==
Much of Butler's early political activism centered around queer and feminist issues, and they served, for a period of time, as the chair of the board of the [[International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://outrightinternational.org/content/outright-now-reunion-2018|title=OutRight Now: Reunion 2018|last=Jessica Stern|date=2018-07-23|website=Global LGBT Human Rights Organization {{!}} OutRight|language=en|access-date=2019-04-15}}</ref> Over the years, Butler has been particularly active in the gay and lesbian rights, feminist, and anti-war movements.<ref name="mcgill" /> They have also written and spoken out on issues ranging from affirmative action and gay marriage to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the prisoners detained at Guantanamo Bay. More recently, Butler has been active in the [[Occupy movement]] and has publicly expressed support for a version of the 2005 [[Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions]] (BDS) campaign against Israel.{{citation needed|date=December 2021}}

They emphasize that [[Israel]] as a state does not, and should not, be taken to represent all [[Jews]] or Jewish opinions.<ref name="Derstandard15">{{cite news |url=http://derstandard.at/1347492636246/US-Philosophin-Butler-Israel-vertritt-mich-nicht |title=US-Philosophin Butler: Israel vertritt mich nicht |newspaper=[[Der Standard]] |date=15 September 2012 |access-date=15 September 2012|language=de-AT}}</ref> Butler is an outspoken critic of many aspects of contemporary Israel's actions<ref name="i654"/><ref name="g408">{{cite web | title=Professor trouble! Post-structuralist star Judith Butler headed to Columbia | website=POLITICO | date=10 November 2010 | url=https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2010/11/professor-trouble-post-structuralist-star-judith-butler-headed-to-columbia-001705 | access-date=18 June 2024}}</ref> and has criticized some forms of [[Zionism]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |title=Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism |date=2012 |publisher=Columbia University Press |location=New York |isbn=978-0-231-51795-9}}</ref> Butler has been variously identified as [[post-Zionist]]<ref name="z797">{{cite web | last=Kelly | first=Siobhan | title=Judith Butler | website=Political Theology Network | date=3 August 2021 | url=https://politicaltheology.com/judith-butler/ | access-date=18 June 2024}}</ref><ref name="g408"/> and [[anti-Zionist]] but is reluctant to embrace such labels, saying in 2013, "I prefer to [provide] a story rather than a category. I come from a strong zionist community in the [United States], and became critical of zionism starting in my early twenties.... I am now working for what can only be called a post-zionist vision at this point in history. Perhaps at another point in history, I would be called a zionist, or even call myself that."<ref name="i654">{{cite web | title=Judith Butler Talks Zionism, Rhetoric | website=The Wesleyan Argus | date=18 February 2013 | url=http://wesleyanargus.com/2013/02/18/judith-butler/ | access-date=18 June 2024}}</ref>

Butler argues that, though [[antisemitism]] has been rising, there is a danger that Jews are seen as "presumptive victims", leading to widespread [[Weaponization of antisemitism|misuse of accusations of antisemitism]], which may in fact trivialize the accusation's gravity and weight.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |contribution = The Charge of Anti-Semitism: Jews, Israel, and the risks of public critique |title=Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence |date=2004 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn= 978-1-84467-544-9 |language=en|pages=101–128}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |title=No, it's not anti-semitic: the right to criticise Israel |journal=[[London Review of Books]] |date=2003 |volume=25 |issue=16 |url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v25/n16/judith-butler/no-it-s-not-anti-semitic |access-date=9 May 2022}}</ref>

On September 7, 2006, Butler participated in a faculty-organized [[teach-in]] against the [[2006 Lebanon War]] at the University of California, Berkeley.<ref>{{cite web| title=Coming attractions for fall 2006| url=http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2006/09/06_eventspreview2.shtml|publisher=UC Berkeley| access-date=6 September 2015}}</ref> Another widely publicized moment occurred in June 2010, when Butler refused the Civil Courage Award (''Zivilcouragepreis'') of the [[Christopher Street Day]] (CSD) Parade in Berlin, Germany, at the award ceremony. They cited racist comments on the part of organizers and a general failure of CSD organizations to distance themselves from racism in general and from [[Islamophobia|anti-Muslim]] excuses for war more specifically. Criticizing the event's commercialism, Butler went on to name several groups that they commended as stronger opponents of "homophobia, transphobia, sexism, racism, and militarism".<ref>Butler, Judith. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BV9dd6r361k I must distance myself from this complicity with racism (Video)] Christopher Street Day 'Civil Courage Prize' Day Refusal Speech. June 19, 2010.</ref>

In October 2011, Butler attended [[Occupy Wall Street]] and, in reference to calls for clarification of the protesters' demands, they said:

<blockquote>People have asked, so what are the demands? What are the demands all of these people are making? Either they say there are no demands and that leaves your critics confused, or they say that the demands for social equality and economic justice are impossible demands. And the impossible demands, they say, are just not practical. If hope is an impossible demand, then we demand the impossible&nbsp;– that the right to shelter, food and employment are impossible demands, then we demand the impossible. If it is impossible to demand that those who profit from the recession redistribute their wealth and cease their greed, then yes, we demand the impossible.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.salon.com/2011/10/24/judith_butler_at_occupy_wall_street/|title=Judith Butler at Occupy Wall Street|date=October 24, 2011|website=Salon.com|access-date=December 4, 2017|author=Justin Elliott}}</ref>
</blockquote>

[[File:Achille Mbembe, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, and David Theo-Goldberg Panel.jpg|thumb|[[Achille Mbembe]], [[Wendy Brown (political theorist)|Wendy Brown]], Judith Butler, and David Theo-Goldberg in 2016]]
Butler is an executive member of Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace – Educational Network for Human Rights in Israel/Palestine.<ref name="mondoweiss"/> They are also a member of the advisory board of [[Jewish Voice for Peace]].<ref name="mondoweiss"/> In mainstream U.S. politics, they expressed support for [[Hillary Clinton]] in the [[2016 United States presidential election|2016 election]].<ref>{{cite web
 |url=https://www.aucegypt.edu/media/media-releases/judith-butler-cairo-review-%25E2%2580%259Ci-would-vote-hillary%25E2%2580%259D
 |title=Judith Butler in Cairo Review: "I Would Vote For Hillary"
 |date=30 October 2016
 |website=The American University in Cairo
 |access-date=18 October 2020}}</ref>

===Adorno Prize affair===
[[File:Adorno-preis-2012-judith-butler-ffm-287.jpg|thumb|upright|Butler receives the [[Theodor W. Adorno Award]] in 2012]]
When Butler received the 2012 [[Theodor W. Adorno Award]], the prize committee came under attack from Israel's Ambassador to Germany, [[Yacov Hadas-Handelsman]]; the director of the [[Simon Wiesenthal Center]]'s office in Jerusalem, [[Efraim Zuroff]];<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-News/Envoy-to-Germany-Awardee-ignores-terror-on-Israel|title=Envoy to Germany: Awardee ignores terror on Israel|last=BENJAMIN WEINTHAL|date=2012-08-28|website=The Jerusalem Post {{!}} JPost.com|access-date=December 4, 2017}}</ref> and the [[Central Council of Jews in Germany|German Central Council of Jews]]. They were upset at Butler's selection because of their remarks about Israel, and specifically, "calls for a boycott against Israel".<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4274289,00.html|title=German Jews oppose award for US philosopher|date=August 29, 2012|newspaper=Ynetnews|access-date=December 4, 2017}}</ref> Butler responded saying that "[Butler] did not take attacks from German Jewish leaders personally".<ref name="JTA-2012" /> Rather, they wrote, the attacks are "directed against everyone who is critical against Israel and its current policies."<ref name="JTA-2012">{{cite journal|last=JTA|title=Frankfurt ripped for honoring Jewish-American scholar who backs Israel boycott|journal=Haaretz|date=7 September 2012|url=http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/frankfurt-ripped-for-honoring-jewish-american-scholar-who-backs-israel-boycott-1.463424|access-date=9 October 2013}}</ref>

In a letter to the ''[[Mondoweiss]]'' website, Butler wrote that their strong ethical views were grounded in Jewish philosophical thought and that it is "blatantly untrue, absurd, and painful for anyone to argue that those who formulate a criticism of the State of Israel is anti-Semitic or, if Jewish, self-hating".<ref name=mondoweiss>{{cite web|last=Butler|first=Judith|title=Judith Butler responds to attack: 'I affirm a Judaism that is not associated with state violence'|url=http://mondoweiss.net/2012/08/judith-butler-responds-to-attack-i-affirm-a-judaism-that-is-not-associated-with-state-violence.html|publisher=Mondoweiss|access-date=9 October 2013|date=27 August 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121228153648/http://mondoweiss.net/2012/08/judith-butler-responds-to-attack-i-affirm-a-judaism-that-is-not-associated-with-state-violence.html|archive-date=December 28, 2012|url-status=dead}}</ref>

=== Comments on Hamas, Hezbollah and the Gaza war ===
Butler has been criticized for statements they have made about [[Hamas]] and [[Hezbollah]]. Butler was accused of describing the [[Islamism|militant Islamist]] groups as "social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left" in 2012.<ref>Petra Marquardt-Bigman, [http://www.algemeiner.com/2012/09/07/defending-judith-butler-in-the-ivory-tower/ "Defending Judith Butler in The Ivory Tower"], ''The Algemeiner Journal'', September 7, 2012.</ref> They were accused of defending "Hezbollah and Hamas as progressive organizations" and supporting their tactics.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Weinthal|first=Benjamin|title=Frankfurt to award US advocate of Israel boycott|journal=The Jerusalem Post|date=26 August 2012|url=http://www.jpost.com/International/Frankfurt-to-award-US-advocate-of-Israel-boycott|access-date=9 October 2013}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Illouz|first=Eva|title=Judith Butler gets a taste of her own politics|journal=Haaretz|date=20 September 2012|url=http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/judith-butler-gets-a-taste-of-her-own-politics-1.465861|access-date=9 October 2013}}</ref>

Butler responded to these criticisms by stating that their remarks on Hamas and Hezbollah were taken completely out of context and, in so doing, their established views on non-violence were contradicted and misrepresented. Butler describes the origin of their remarks on Hamas and Hezbollah in the following way:
<blockquote>I was asked by a member of an academic audience a few years ago whether I thought Hamas and Hezbollah belonged to "the global left" and I replied with two points. My first point was merely descriptive: those political organizations define themselves as anti-imperialist, and anti-imperialism is one characteristic of the global left, so on that basis one could describe them as part of the global left. My second point was then critical: as with any group on the left, one has to decide whether one is for that group or against that group, and one needs to critically evaluate their stand.<ref name="mondoweiss" /></blockquote>

After the start of the [[Gaza war]] in 2023, Butler published an essay entitled "The Compass of Mourning" in which they "condemn without qualification" the "terrifying and revolting massacre" while at the same time arguing that the attacks by Hamas should be seen in the context of the "horrors of the last seventy years".<ref>Butler, Judith: [https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n20/judith-butler/the-compass-of-mourning''The Compass of Mourning''], lrb.co.uk, October 19, 2023.</ref> The article was criticized several times in German newspapers. Christian Geyer-Hindemith wrote in the ''[[Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung]]'' that Butler "makes individual atrocities disappear" through contextualization. Thomas E. Schmidt spoke in the ''[[Die Zeit]]'' about the "reversal of guilt". At the same time, Anna Mayr wrote in the ''Die Zeit'' that "countless the same thing goes on for paragraphs: Nothing can justify the violence, and you still have to see the violence of the occupying power, Israel. It becomes clear that [they] (understandably) doesn't know where to think next."<ref>Schmidt, Thomas E.: [https://www.zeit.de/kultur/2023-10/judith-butler-israel-hamas-linke-intellektuelle ''Linke Schuldumkehr''], zeit.de, October 19, 2023, (german).</ref><ref>Geyer-Hindemith, Christian: [https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/judith-butler-ueber-den-terror-der-hamas-reden-ueber-nahost-19249348.html ''Das Böse ist konkret''], faz.net, October 17, 2023 (german).</ref><ref>Mayr, Anna : [https://www.zeit.de/2023/44/politische-linke-hamas-angriff-positionierung/komplettansicht ''Warum sich die postmoderne Linke so schwertut, den Terror gegen Israel zu verurteilen''], zeit.de, October 19, 2023 (german).</ref> Writing for ''[[Haaretz]]'', Chaim Levinson rejected Butler's framing of the matter within a context of [[colonialism]], saying that term is "the emptiest word in Western intellectual discourse today".<ref>{{Cite news |title=אקדמאים יהודים יקרים: חמאס התגאה ברצח עמנו, לא ברצח קולוניאליסטים ציונים |language=he |work=הארץ |url=https://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/galleryfriday/chaimlevinson/2023-10-25/ty-article/.highlight/0000018b-616a-d307-adbb-657ac16e0000 |access-date=2023-10-28|url-access=subscription}}</ref>

Speaking at a public event in Paris on March 3, 2024, Butler stated that the [[October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel]] was an uprising, an instance of armed resistance, rather than an act of terrorism.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/pour-judith-butler-les-massacres-du-7-octobre-ne-sont-pas-une-attaque-terroriste-mais-un-acte-de-resistance-armee-20240305|first=Paul|last=Sugy|title=Pour la philosophe féministe Judith Butler, l'attaque terroriste du 7 octobre est "un acte de résistance armée"|work=Le Figaro|date=March 4, 2024|access-date=March 9, 2024|language=fr}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.thejc.com/news/world/outrage-as-influential-feminist-academic-judith-butler-calls-october-7-murder-and-rape-resistance-f15cx658|title=Outrage as influential feminist academic Judith Butler calls October 7 murder and rape 'resistance'|work=The Jewish Chronicle|first=Jane|last=Prinsley|date=March 7, 2024|access-date=March 9, 2024}}</ref>

<blockquote>"I think it is more honest and historically correct to say that the uprising of October 7 was an act of armed resistance. It is not a terrorist attack and it is not an antisemitic attack. It was an attack against Israelis."<ref>{{cite web |author1=Etan Nechin |title=Why Judith Butler Calling Hamas' Slaughter 'Armed Resistance' Is So Depressing |url=https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-03-07/ty-article-opinion/.premium/why-judith-butler-calling-hamas-slaughter-armed-resistance-is-so-depressing/0000018e-18a9-d1cc-abfe-dfad4cd90000 |website=Haaretz |access-date=1 May 2024 |date=March 7, 2024}}</ref></blockquote>

=== Comments on Black Lives Matter ===
In a January 2015 interview with [[George Yancy]] of ''[[The New York Times]]'', Butler discussed the [[Black Lives Matter]] movement. They said:
<blockquote>What is implied by this statement [Black Lives Matter], a statement that should be obviously true, but apparently is not? If black lives do not matter, then they are not really regarded as lives, since a life is supposed to matter. So what we see is that some lives matter more than others, that some lives matter so much that they need to be protected at all costs, and that other lives matter less, or not at all. And when that becomes the situation, then the lives that do not matter so much, or do not matter at all, can be killed or lost, can be exposed to conditions of destitution, and there is no concern, or even worse, that is regarded as the way it is supposed to be...When people engage in concerted actions across racial lines to build communities based on equality, to defend the rights of those who are disproportionately imperiled to have a chance to live without the fear of dying quite suddenly at the hands of the police. There are many ways to do this, in the street, the office, the home, and in the media. Only through such an ever-growing cross-racial struggle against racism can we begin to achieve a sense of all the lives that really do matter.</blockquote>
The dialogue draws heavily on their 2004 book ''Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence.''<ref>{{cite news|last1=Yancy|first1=George|last2=Butler|first2=Judith|title=What's Wrong With 'All Lives Matter'?|url=http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/12/whats-wrong-with-all-lives-matter/?_r=0|access-date=7 March 2015|work=[[The New York Times]]|date=12 January 2015}}</ref>

===Avital Ronell sexual harassment case===
On May 11, 2018, Butler joined a group of scholars in writing a letter to [[New York University]] following the sexual harassment suit filed by a former NYU graduate student against his advisor [[Avital Ronell]]. The signatories acknowledged not having had access to the confidential findings of the investigation that followed the [[Title IX]] complaint against Ronell. Nonetheless, they accused the complainant of waging a "malicious campaign" against Ronell. The signatories also wrote that the presumed "malicious intention has animated and sustained this legal nightmare" for a highly regarded scholar. "If she were to be terminated or relieved of her duties, the injustice would be widely recognized and opposed."<ref>{{cite journal|url=https://www.chronicle.com/article/Battle-Over-Alleged-Harassment/244295|title=Battle Over Alleged Harassment Escalates as Former Graduate Student Sues Professor and NYU|journal=The Chronicle of Higher Education|date=August 16, 2018|last1=Mangan|first1=Katherine}}</ref> Butler, one of the signatories, invoked their title as President Elect of the [[Modern Language Association]]. <!--James J. Marino, a professor at Cleveland State University and a member of the MLA, started a petition to demand Butler's resignation or removal from their post. He argued that "Protesting against one instance of punishment is only a means to the larger end of preserving senior faculty's privilege of impunity.&nbsp;... [Butler] was standing up for an old, corrupt, and long-standing way of doing business. The time for doing business that way is over. We should never look back."--><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/08/20/some-say-particulars-ronell-harassment-case-are-moot-it-all-comes-down-power|title=Some say the particulars of the Ronell harassment case are moot, in that it all comes down to power|last=Colleen Flaherty|date=August 20, 2018|website=www.insidehighered.com|language=en}}</ref> Some three months later, Butler apologized to the MLA for the letter. "I acknowledged that I should not have allowed the MLA affiliation to go forward with my name," Butler wrote to the ''[[Chronicle of Higher Education]]''. "I expressed regret to the MLA officers and staff, and my colleagues accepted my apology. I extend that same apology to MLA members."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/letters/judith-butler-explains-letter-in-support-of-avital-ronell/|title=Judith Butler Explains Letter in Support of Avital Ronell – Letters – Blogs – The Chronicle of Higher Education|website=www.chronicle.com|date=2018-08-20}}</ref>

===Comments on the anti-gender movement and trans-exclusionary radical feminism===
[[File:Manifestantes protestam contra e a favor de filósofa Judith Butler em São Paulo (38245843701).jpg|thumb|left|Sign at [[São Paulo]] with Judith Butler's name. "{{lang|pt|destruir identidade sexual dos seus filhos}}" can be loosely translated as ''destroy sexual identity of your children'']]

Butler said in 2020 that [[trans-exclusionary radical feminism]] (TERF) is "a fringe movement that is seeking to speak in the name of the mainstream, and that our responsibility is to refuse to let that happen".<ref>{{cite news |title=Judith Butler on the culture wars, JK Rowling and living in "anti-intellectual times" |url=https://www.newstatesman.com/uncategorized/2020/09/judith-butler-culture-wars-jk-rowling-and-living-anti-intellectual-times |access-date=17 November 2021 |work=New Statesman}}</ref> In 2021, drawing from [[Umberto Eco]] who understood "fascism" as "a beehive of contradictions",{{efn|Butler notes a 'contradiction': {{blockquote|... chromosomal and endocrinological differences complicate the binarism [''[[sic]]''] of sex ... [Nevertheless,] [t]he anti-gender advocates claim that "gender ideologists" deny the material differences between men and women, but their [the anti-gender advocates'] materialism quickly devolves ... .<ref name=WhyBacklash/>}}}} they noted that the term ''fascism'' "describes" the "anti-gender ideology". They cautioned self-declared feminists from allying with [[anti-gender movement]]s in targeting trans, non-binary, and genderqueer people.<ref name=WhyBacklash>{{cite news |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |title=Why is the idea of 'gender' provoking backlash the world over? |url=https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2021/oct/23/judith-butler-gender-ideology-backlash |work=The Guardian|access-date=17 November 2021|quote=Anti-gender movements[''sic''] ... insist that 'gender' is an imperialist construct, that it is an 'ideology' now being imposed on local cultures of the [[global south]], spuriously drawing on the language of [[liberation theology]] and [[decolonial]] rhetoric. Or, as the rightwing Italian group Pro Vita maintains, 'gender' intensifies the social effects of capitalism ... The anti-gender movement[sic] is not a conservative position with ... clear ... principles. No, as a fascist trend, it mobilizes a range of rhetorical strategies from across the political spectrum ... its incoherence is part of its power. ... [The anti-gender movement] mixes right[-wing] and left[-wing] discourses at will.}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Judith Butler says the 'anti-gender ideology movement' is a dangerous 'fascist trend' |url=https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2021/10/26/judith-butler-anti-gender-ideology/ |access-date=18 November 2021 |work=Pink News}}</ref> Butler also explored the issue in a 2019 paper in which they argued that "the confusion of discourses is part of what constitutes the [[Necropolitics#Queer and trans necropolitics|fascist structure]] and appeal of at least some of these [anti-gender] movements. One can oppose gender as a cultural import from the North at the same time that one can see that very opposition as a social movement against further colonization of the South. The result is not a turn to the Left, but an embrace of ethno-nationalism."<ref name=Butler2019>{{cite journal |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |title=What Threat? The Campaign Against "Gender Ideology" |journal=Glocalism |date=2019 |volume=2019 |issue=3 |doi=10.12893/gjcpi.2019.3.1 |url=https://glocalismjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Butler_gjcpi_2019_3-1.pdf}}</ref> In 2023 Butler said, "the anti-gender ideology movement should be considered a [[neo-fascist]] phenomenon."<ref>{{cite web |title=Professor Judith Butler 'Who Is Afraid of Gender?' |date=June 7, 2023 |url=https://www.gender.cam.ac.uk/news/professor-judith-butler-who-afraid-gender-lecture-recording-now-available |publisher=[[University of Cambridge]] |access-date=18 September 2023}}</ref>

====''The Guardian'' interview====
On September 7, 2021, ''[[The Guardian]]'' published an interview<ref name="Guardian interview">{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/sep/07/judith-butler-interview-gender |title=Judith Butler: 'We need to rethink the category of woman' |work=[[The Guardian]] |date=September 7, 2021 |accessdate=September 8, 2021 |last=Gleeson|first=Jules|issn=0261-3077}}</ref> with Butler by Jules Gleeson that included Butler's view of [[Feminist views on transgender topics#Gender-critical feminism and trans-exclusionary radical feminism|trans-exclusionary feminists]] (TERFs). In response to a question about the [[Wi Spa controversy]], the ''[[Press Gazette]]'' stated that Butler, in the ''Guardian'' article, said: "The anti-gender ideology is one of the dominant strains of fascism in our times."<ref>{{cite news|last=Mayhew|first=Freddy|url=https://pressgazette.co.uk/guardian-pulls-judith-butler-gender-interview/|title=Guardian pulls quotes from interview in which academic compared 'anti-gender ideology' to fascism|work=[[Press Gazette]]|location=London|date=September 8, 2021|access-date=September 10, 2021}}</ref> Within a few hours of publication, three paragraphs including this statement were removed, with a note explaining: "This article was edited on 7 September 2021 to reflect developments which occurred after the interview took place."<ref name="Guardian censored">{{cite web|url=https://www.vice.com/en/article/why-the-guardian-censored-judith-butler-on-terfs/ |title=Why The Guardian Censored Judith Butler on TERFs |work=[[Vice (magazine)|Vice]] |date=September 8, 2021 |access-date=September 8, 2021 |author=Maiberg, Emanuel}}</ref>

''The Guardian'' was then accused of censoring Butler for having compared TERFs to fascists. British writer [[Roz Kaveney]] called it "a truly shocking moment of bigoted dishonesty," while British transgender activist and writer [[Juno Dawson]], among others, observed that ''The Guardian'' had inadvertently triggered the [[Streisand effect]]—an attempt to censor yields the unintended consequence of increasing awareness of a topic.<ref name="Guardian accused of censoring">{{cite web|url=https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2021/09/08/judith-butler-guardian-interview-terf-trans/ |title=The Guardian accused of 'censoring' Judith Butler interview comparing TERFs to fascists: 'Cowards' |work=[[PinkNews]] |date=September 8, 2021 |accessdate=September 8, 2021 |author=Wakefield, Lily}}</ref> The next day, ''The Guardian'' acknowledged "a failure in our editorial standards".<ref name="Guardian censored"/>

==Personal life==

Butler is a [[lesbian]],<ref>{{cite book |year=2013|pages=17–20|last1=Daughenbaugh |first1=Lynda Robbirds|last2=Shaw |first2=Edward L. |title=A Critical Pedagogy of Resistance |chapter=Judith Butler: Philosophy of Resistance |series=Transgressions |doi=10.1007/978-94-6209-374-4_5|editor-last=Kirylo|editor-first=James D.|isbn=978-94-6209-374-4 }}</ref> legally [[Non-binary gender|non-binary]] in the State of California,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Butler |first=Judith |title=Who's afraid of gender? |date=2024 |publisher=Allen lane |isbn=978-0-241-59582-4 |location=London |pages=165–166}}</ref> and, as of 2020, said they use both [[singular they|singular they/them]] and she/her pronouns but prefer to use singular they/them pronouns.<ref name="DerTagesspiegel2020-05-13a">{{cite web |author=Kathryn Fischer |authorlink= |date=13 July 2020 |title=The Pronoun is free from the Body - but it is not free from Gender (Das Pronomen ist frei vom Körper - aber es ist nicht frei vom Geschlecht) |url=https://www.tagesspiegel.de/gesellschaft/queerspiegel/gender-und-grammatik-das-pronomen-ist-frei-vom-koerper-aber-es-ist-nicht-frei-vom-geschlecht/25826376.html |access-date=24 December 2021 |website=[[Der Tagesspiegel]] |language=German |quote=Which pronoun do I prefer? Butler laughs ... . 'It is they', Butler says ... . It is the year 2020, and Butler outs themselves as "they" - a truly historic moment. (Welches Pronomen bevorzuge ich? Butler lacht .. . 'Es ist they', sagt Butler ... . Wir haben das Jahr 2020 und Butler outet sich als "they" - ein wahrhaft historischer Moment.)}}</ref> Butler indicated that they were "never at home" with being assigned female at birth.<ref name="NewStatesman2020-09-22a">{{Cite news |last=Ferber |first=Alona |date=2020-09-22 |title=Judith Butler on the culture wars, JK Rowling and living in 'anti-intellectual times' |url=https://www.newstatesman.com/international/2020/09/judith-butler-culture-wars-jk-rowling-and-living-anti-intellectual-times |access-date=2020-09-27 |website=[[New Statesman]] |language=en |quote=Many people who were assigned "female" at birth never felt at home with that assignment, and those people (including me) tell all of us something important about the constraints of traditional gender norms for many who fall outside its terms. ... *Judith Butler goes by she or they}}</ref>

They live in Berkeley with their partner [[Wendy Brown (political theorist)|Wendy Brown]] and son.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.thecut.com/2016/06/judith-butler-c-v-r.html|title=Think Gender Is Performance? You Have Judith Butler to Thank for That|last=Molly Fischer|date=2016-06-21|website=The Cut|language=en|access-date=December 4, 2017}}</ref>

==Selected honors and awards==
Butler has had a visiting appointment at [[Birkbeck, University of London]] (2009–present).<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychosocial/our-staff/visiting-staff/visiting-academics|title=Visiting staff and Emeritus staff|website=www.bbk.ac.uk|access-date=February 12, 2014|archive-date=October 20, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171020011136/http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychosocial/our-staff/visiting-staff/visiting-academics|url-status=dead}}</ref>
* 1999: Guggenheim Fellowship<ref name="mellon" />
* 1999: The World's Worst Writing<ref>{{Cite news|title=World's worst writing |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/1999/dec/24/news |access-date=2024-04-26 |website=The Guardian|date=December 24, 1999 }}</ref>
* 2001: David R Kessler Award for LGBTQ Studies, [[CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies]]<ref>{{cite web |title=Kessler Lecture 2001 Judith Butler - YouTube |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC3ycMh0uns |access-date=2022-05-15 |website=YouTube| date=April 24, 2018 }}</ref>
* 2007: Elected to the [[American Philosophical Society]]<ref>{{Cite web|title=APS Member History|url=https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=Judith+Butler&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=&year-max=&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced|access-date=2021-05-07|website=search.amphilsoc.org}}</ref>
* 2008: Mellon Award for their exemplary contributions to scholarship in the humanities<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2009/03/19_butler.shtml|title=Judith Butler wins Mellon Award|website=Berkeley.edu|language=en-US|access-date=2017-07-20|author=Kathleen Maclay|date=19 March 2009}}</ref>
* 2010: "25 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World", [[Utne Reader]]<ref name="utne">{{cite web|url=http://www.utne.com/Politics/Utne-Reader-Visionaries-Judith-Butler-Abu-Ghraib-Torture.aspx|title=Judith Butler: War Empathizer|access-date=October 19, 2010|author=Mike Rowe|date=October 13, 2010 }}</ref>
* 2012: [[Theodor W. Adorno Award]]<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/blogs/culture/4222-judith-butler-wins-theodor-adorno-prize-despite-opponents|title=Judith Butler wins Theodor Adorno Prize despite opponents|last=Smith|first=Amelia|date=August 29, 2012|publisher=Middle East Monitor|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120901010507/http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/blogs/culture/4222-judith-butler-wins-theodor-adorno-prize-despite-opponents|archive-date=September 1, 2012|df=mdy-all}}</ref>
* 2013: Doctorate of Letters, ''honoris causa,'' University of St. Andrews<ref>{{cite web|title=HONORANDS FROM 2007–2014|url=https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/media/student-services/documents/Honorands%20from%202007-2014.pdf|publisher=University of St Andrews|access-date=18 November 2014|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141129045443/https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/media/student-services/documents/Honorands%20from%202007-2014.pdf|archive-date=November 29, 2014|df=mdy-all}}</ref>
* 2013: Doctorate of Letters, ''honoris causa,'' McGill University<ref>{{cite web|last=McGill Reporter|title=Judith Butler, Doctor of Letters|url=http://publications.mcgill.ca/reporter/2013/05/judith-butler/|publisher=McGill Reporter|access-date=2 June 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150925091656/http://publications.mcgill.ca/reporter/2013/05/judith-butler/|archive-date=September 25, 2015|url-status=dead|date=May 29, 2013}}</ref>
* 2014: Doctorate of Letters, ''honoris causa,'' University of Fribourg<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.laliberte.ch/news-agence/detail/la-philosophe-americaine-judith-butler-honoree-a-fribourg/263626#.VGoywJCG8e0|title=La philosophe américaine Judith Butler honorée à Fribourg|website=laliberte.ch|publisher=La Liberté|access-date=2014-11-17|language=fr|date=2014-11-15|archive-date=November 29, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141129031632/https://www.laliberte.ch/news-agence/detail/la-philosophe-americaine-judith-butler-honoree-a-fribourg/263626#.VGoywJCG8e0|url-status=dead}}</ref>
* 2014: Named one of PinkNews's top 11 Jewish gay and lesbian icons<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2014/12/16/pinknews-top-11-jewish-gay-and-lesbian-icons/|title=PinkNews' top 11 Jewish gay and lesbian icons|website=Pinknews.co.uk|access-date=December 4, 2017|date=December 16, 2014|author=Joseph McCormick}}</ref>
* 2015: Elected as a [[Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy]]<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.britac.ac.uk/news/british-academy-fellowship-reaches-1000-42-new-uk-fellows-are-welcomed|title=British Academy Fellowship reaches 1,000 as 42 new UK Fellows are welcomed|date=16 Jul 2015}}</ref>
* 2018: Doctorate of Letters, ''honoris causa,'' [[University of Belgrade]]<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.autonomija.info/dzudit-batler-pocasna-doktorka-beogradskog-univerziteta.html|title=Judith Butler honorary causa from University of Belgrade|website=autonomija.info|access-date=July 22, 2018|language=sr-RS|date=July 19, 2018|archive-date=January 20, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220120224509/https://www.autonomija.info/dzudit-batler-pocasna-doktorka-beogradskog-univerziteta.html|url-status=dead}}</ref>
* 2018: Butler delivered the [[Gifford Lectures]] with their series entitled 'My Life, Your Life: Equality and the Philosophy of Non-Violence'
* 2019: Elected as Fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://members.amacad.org/content/members/newFellows.aspx|title=2019 Fellows and International Honorary Members with their affiliations at the time of election|website=members.amacad.org|access-date=2020-03-04|archive-date=March 2, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200302174101/https://members.amacad.org/content/members/newFellows.aspx|url-status=dead}}</ref>

==Publications==
Butler's books have been translated into numerous languages; ''Gender Trouble'' has been translated into twenty-seven languages. They have co-authored and edited over a dozen volumes—most recently, ''Dispossession: The Performative in the Political'' (2013), coauthored with Athena Athanasiou. Over the years Butler has also published many influential essays, interviews, and public presentations. Butler is considered by many to be "one of the most influential voices in contemporary political theory,"<ref>{{citation | last = Barker | first = Derek W.M. | contribution = Judith Butler's postmodern antigone | editor-last = Barker | editor-first = Derek W.M. | title = Tragedy and citizenship conflict, reconciliation, and democracy from Haemon to Hegel | page = 119 | publisher = [[SUNY Press|State University of New York Press]] | location = Albany | year = 2009 | isbn = 978-0-7914-7740-3 |lccn= 2008005664 |oclc=897111782 | postscript = .}}</ref> and the most widely read and influential gender studies academic in the world.<ref>{{cite book|last=Ian|first=Buchanan|title=A Dictionary of Critical Theory|year=2010|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-172659-0|chapter-url=http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199532919.001.0001/acref-9780199532919-e-100|author-link=Judith Butler|access-date=9 October 2013|doi=10.1093/acref/9780199532919.001.0001|chapter=Butler, Judith}}</ref>

The following is a partial list of Butler's publications.

===Books===
* {{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |year=1999 |orig-year=1987 |title=Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France |location=New York |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-0-231-15998-2 |title-link=Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France}} [Their doctoral dissertation.]
* {{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |year=2006 |orig-year=1990 |title=Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity |location=New York |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-415-38955-6 |title-link=Gender Trouble}}
* {{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |year=1993 |title=Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" |url=https://archive.org/details/bodiesthatmatter00butl |url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-415-90365-3}}
* {{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |last2=Benhabib |first2=Seyla |last3=Fraser |first3=Nancy |last4=Cornell |first4=Drucilla |author-link2=Seyla Benhabib |author-link3=Nancy Fraser |year=1995 |title=Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange |location=New York |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-415-91086-6}}
* {{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |title=Excitable speech: a politics of the performative |url=https://archive.org/details/excitablespeechp0000butl |url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=Routledge |year=1997 |isbn=978-0-415-91587-8}}
* {{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |year=1997 |title=The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection |url=https://archive.org/details/psychiclifeofpow0000butl |url-access=registration |location=Stanford, CA |publisher=Stanford University Press |isbn=978-0-8047-2812-6}}
* {{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |year=2000 |title=Antigone's Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death |url=https://archive.org/details/antigonesclaim00judi |url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-0-231-51804-8}}
* {{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |last2=Laclau |first2=Ernesto |last3=Žižek |first3=Slavoj |author-link2=Ernesto Laclau |author-link3=Slavoj Žižek |year=2000 |title=Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left |location=London |publisher=Verso |isbn=978-1-85984-278-2 |title-link=Contingency, Hegemony, Universality}}
* {{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |last2=Beck-Gernsheim |first2=Elisabeth |last3=Puigvert |first3=Lídia |author-link2=Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim |author-link3=Lídia Puigvert |year=2003 |title=Women & Social Transformation |location=New York |publisher=P. Lang |isbn=978-0-8204-6708-5}}
* {{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |year=2004 |title=Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence |location=London |publisher=Verso |isbn=978-1-84467-544-9}}
* {{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |year=2004 |title=Undoing gender |location=New York |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-203-49962-7 |title-link=Undoing Gender}}
* {{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |year=2005 |title=Giving an account of oneself |location=New York |publisher=Fordham University Press |isbn=978-0-8232-4677-9}}
* {{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |last2=Spivak |first2=Gayatri |author-link2=Gayatri Spivak |year=2007 |title=Who Sings the Nation-State?: Language, Politics, Belonging |location=London |publisher=Seagull Books |isbn=978-1-905422-57-9}}
* {{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |last2=Asad |first2=Talal |last3=Brown |first3=Wendy |last4=Mahmood |first4=Saba |year=2009 |title=Is Critique Secular?: Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech |location=Berkeley, CA |publisher=Townsend Center for the Humanities, University of California Distributed by University of California Press |isbn=978-0-9823294-1-2}}
* {{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |year=2009 |title=Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? |publisher=Verso |location=London New York |isbn=978-1-84467-333-9}}
* {{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |last2=Habermas |first2=Jürgen |last3=Taylor |first3=Charles |last4=West |first4=Cornel |author-link2=Jürgen Habermas |author-link3=Charles Taylor (philosopher) |author-link4=Cornel West |year=2011 |title=The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere |url=https://archive.org/details/powerofrelig_xxxx_2011_000_10862422 |url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-1-283-00892-1}}
* {{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |last2=Weed | first2=Elizabeth |year=2011 |title=The Question of Gender: Joan W. Scott's Critical Feminism |location=Bloomington, IN |publisher=Indiana University Press |isbn=978-0-253-00153-5}}
* {{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |year=2012 |title=Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism |location=New York |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-0-231-51795-9|title-link=Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism}}
* {{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |last2=Athanasiou |first2=Athena |year=2013 |title=Dispossession: The Performative in the Political |location=Cambridge |publisher=Polity Press |isbn=978-0-7456-5381-5 }}
* {{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |year=2015 |title=Senses of the Subject |location=New York |publisher=Fordham University Press |isbn=978-0-8232-6467-4}}
* {{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |year=2015 |title=Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly |location=Cambridge, MA |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-96775-5}}
* {{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |last2=Gambetti |first2=Zeynep |editor-first1=Sabsay |editor-last1=Leticia |year=2016 |title=Vulnerability in Resistance |location=Durham |publisher=Duke University Press |isbn=978-0-8223-6279-1}}
* {{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |year=2020 |title=The Force of Nonviolence |location=New York |publisher=Penguin Random House |isbn=978-1-78873-276-5}}
* {{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |year=2022 |title=What World Is This? A Pandemic Phenomenology |location=New York |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-0-231-20828-4}}
* {{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |year=2024 |title=Who's Afraid of Gender? |location=New York |publisher=Farrar, Straus & Giroux |isbn=978-0-374-60822-4}}

===Book chapters===
* {{citation | last1 = Butler | first1 = Judith | contribution = Lesbian S & M: the politics of dis-illusion | editor-last1 = Linden | editor-first1 = Robin Ruth | title = Against sadomasochism: a radical feminist analysis | publisher = Frog in the Well | location = East Palo Alto, California | year = 1982 | isbn =978-0-9603628-3-7 | postscript = .| title-link = Against Sadomasochism: A Radical Feminist Analysis }}
* {{citation | last1 = Butler | first1 = Judith | author1-mask = 3 | contribution = The pleasures of repetition | editor-last1 = Glick | editor-first1 = Robert A. | editor-last2 = Bone | editor-first2 = Stanley | title = Pleasure beyond the pleasure principle: the role of affect in motivation, development, and adaptation | publisher = Yale University Press | location = New Haven | year = 1990 | isbn = 978-0-300-04793-6 | postscript = .}}
* {{citation | last1 = Butler | first1 = Judith | author1-mask = 3 | contribution = Imitation and gender insubordination | editor-last = Fuss | editor-first = Diana | title = Inside/out: lesbian theories, gay theories | publisher = Routledge | location = New York | year = 1991 | isbn = 978-0-415-90237-3 | postscript = . | url-access = registration | url = https://archive.org/details/insideoutlesbian00fuss }}
* {{citation | last1 = Butler | first1 = Judith | author1-mask = 3 | contribution = Kierkegaard's speculative despair | editor-last1 = Solomon | editor-first1 = Robert C. | editor-last2 = Higgins | editor-first2 = Kathleen M. | editor-link1 = Robert C. Solomon | title = The age of German idealism | pages = 363–395 | publisher = Routledge | location = London New York | series = Routledge History of Philosophy, Volume VI | year = 1993 | isbn = 978-0-415-30878-6 | postscript = .}}
* {{citation | last1 = Butler | first1 = Judith | author1-mask = 3 | contribution = Imitation and gender insubordination | editor-last1 = Nicholson | editor-first1 = Linda | title = The second wave: a reader in feminist theory | pages = 300–316 | publisher = Routledge | location = New York | year = 1997 | isbn = 978-0-415-91761-2 | postscript = .}}
* {{citation | last1 = Butler | first1 = Judith | author1-mask = 3 | contribution = Gender is burning: questions of appropriation and subversion | editor-last1 = McClintock | editor-first1 = Anne | editor-last2 = Mufti | editor-first2 = Aamir | editor-last3 = Shohat | editor-first3 = Ella | editor-link1 = Anne McClintock | editor-link3 = Ella Shohat | title = Dangerous liaisons: gender, nation, and postcolonial perspectives | pages = [https://archive.org/details/dangerousliaison0000unse/page/381 381–395] | publisher = University of Minnesota Press | location = Minnesota, Minneapolis | year = 1997 | isbn = 978-0-8166-2649-6 | postscript = . | url = https://archive.org/details/dangerousliaison0000unse/page/381 }}
* {{citation | last1 = Butler | first1 = Judith | author1-mask = 3 | contribution = Sexual difference as a question of ethics | editor-last = Doyle | editor-first = Laura | title = Bodies of resistance: new phenomenologies of politics, agency, and culture | publisher = Northwestern University Press | location = Evanston, Illinois | year = 2001 | isbn = 978-0-8101-1847-8 | postscript = .}}
* {{citation | last1 = Butler | first1 = Judith | author1-mask = 3 | contribution = Appearances aside | editor-last1 = Post | editor-first1 = Robert | editor-link = Robert C. Post | title = Prejudicial appearances: the logic of American antidiscrimination law | pages = 73–84 | publisher = [[Duke University Press]] | location = Durham, North Carolina | year = 2001 | isbn = 978-0-8223-2713-4 | postscript = .}}
* 
* {{citation | last1 = Butler | first1 = Judith | author1-mask = 3 | contribution = Subjects of sex/gender/desire | editor-last1 = Cudd | editor-first1 = Ann | editor-last2 = Andreasen | editor-first2 = Robin O. | editor-link1 = Ann Cudd | title = Feminist theory: a philosophical anthology | pages = 145–153 | publisher = Blackwell Publishing | location = Oxford, UK Malden, Massachusetts | year = 2005 | isbn = 978-1-4051-1661-9 | postscript = .}}
* {{citation | last1 = Butler | first1 = Judith | author1-mask = 3 | contribution = Ronell as gay scientist | editor-last = Davis | editor-first = Diane | title = Reading Ronell | publisher = University of Illinois Press | location = Urbana | year = 2009 | isbn = 978-0-252-07647-3 | postscript = .}} A collection of essays on the work of [[Avital Ronell]].
* {{Cite journal | last1 = Blanchet | first1 = Nassia | last2 = Blanchet | first2 = Reginald | title = Interview with Judith Butler | journal = Hurly-Burly: The International Lacanian Journal of Psychoanalysis | volume = 3 | date = 3 April 2010 | url = http://www.amp-nls.org/page/fr/104/3-april-2010 }}
* {{citation | last1 = Butler | first1 = Judith | author1-mask = 3 | contribution = Lecture notes | editor-last1 = Ronell | editor-first1 = Avital | editor-last2 = Joubert | editor-first2 = Joseph | title = Georges Perros (Issue 983 of Collection Europe) | publisher = Europe | location = Paris | year = 2011 | isbn = 978-2-35150-038-5 | postscript = . | url-access = registration | url = https://archive.org/details/georgesperrosjos0000unse }} [https://books.google.com/books?isbn=2351500385 Details.]
* {{citation | last1 = Butler | first1 = Judith| author1-mask = 3| contribution = Rethinking Vulnerability and Resistance | editor-last1 = Butler| editor-first1 = Judith| editor-last2 = Gambetti| editor-first2 = Zeynep| editor-last3 = Sabsay| editor-first3 = Leticia|title = Vulnerability in Resistance | pages = 12–28 | publisher = Duke University Press | year = 2016 | isbn = 978-0-8223-6290-6}}
* {{citation | last1 = Butler | first1 = Judith | author1-mask = 3 | contribution = Defamation and the Grammar of Harsh Words | editor-last1 = Sweetapple | editor-first1 = Christopher | title = The Queer Intersectional in Contemporary Germany | pages = 203–207 | publisher = Psychosocial-Verlag | series = Applied Sexology | year = 2018 | isbn = 978-3-8379-7444-7 |issn=2367-2420|last2=Hark|first2=Sabine|author-link2=Sabine Hark|doi=10.30820/9783837974447| doi-access = free }}<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.psychosozial-verlag.de/7444|title=The Queer Intersectional in Contemporary Germany (PDF-E-Book). Essays on Racism, Capitalism and Sexual Politics|date=September 2018 |language=de-DE|access-date=2018-09-22 |last1=Sweetapple |first1=Christopher |series=Angewandte Sexualwissenschaft |doi=10.30820/9783837974447 |isbn=978-3-8379-7444-7 }}</ref>
* {{citation | last1 = Butler | first1 = Judith| author1-mask = 3| contribution = Bodies that Still Matter | editor-last1 = Halsema| editor-first1 =Annemie | editor-last2 = Kwastek| editor-first2 =Katja | editor-last3 = van den Oever | editor-first3 =Roel |title = Bodies That Still Matter. Resonances of the Work of Judith Butler | pages = 177–195 | publisher = Amsterdam University Press | year = 2021 | isbn = 9789463722940}}

==Notes==
{{Notelist}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Sources==
{{refbegin|30em}}
* {{Cite journal |last=Ahmed |first=Sara |date=2016 |title=Interview with Judith Butler |journal=Sexualities |volume=19 |issue=4 |pages=482–492 |doi=10.1177/1363460716629607 |s2cid=147584494 |type= Interview on ''Gender Trouble'' and Butler's relation to the field of queer studies |doi-access=free}}
* {{Cite book |last=Burgos |first=Elvira |title=Qué cuenta como una vida. La pregunta por la libertad en Judith Butler |publisher=Antonio Machado |year=2008 |isbn=978-8477747765 |location=Madrid}}
* {{Cite book |last1=Chambers |first1=Samuel A. |title=Judith Butler and Political Theory: Troubling Politics |last2=Carver |first2=Terrell |publisher=Routledge |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-415-76382-0 |location=New York}}
* {{Cite journal |last=Cheah |first=Pheng |year=1996 |title=Mattering |journal=Diacritics |volume=26 |issue=1 |pages=108–139|doi=10.1353/dia.1996.0004 }}
* {{Cite web |last=Eldred |first=Michael |date=29 Apr 2015 |title=Metaphysics of Feminism: A Critical Note on Judith Butler's ''Gender Trouble'' |url=http://www.arte-fact.org/mtphysfm.html |website=artefact |version=v. 2.02 }}
* {{Cite journal |last1=Evans |first1=Adrienne |last2=Riley |first2=Sarah |last3=Shankar |first3=Avi |year=2010 |title=Technologies of sexiness: theorizing women's engagement in the sexualization of culture |journal=Feminism & Psychology |volume=20 |pages=114–131 |doi=10.1177/0959353509351854 |s2cid=145136872}}
* {{Cite book |title=Bodies That Still Matter. Resonances of the Work of Judith Butler |publisher=Amsterdam University Press |year=2021 |editor-last=Halsema |editor-first=Annemie |location=Amsterdam |editor-last2=Kwastek |editor-first2=Katja |editor-last3=van den Oever |editor-first3=Roel}}
* {{Cite thesis |last=Karhu |first=Sanna |title=From Violence to Resistance: Judith Butler's Critique of Norms |degree=Ph.D. |publisher=University of Helsinki |url=http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN978-951-51-3648-0 |isbn=978-951-51-3647-3 |year=2017 }}{{Dead link|date=February 2025 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}
* {{Cite book |last=Kirby |first=Vicki |author-link=Vicki Kirby |title=Judith Butler: Live Theory |publisher=Continuum |year=2006 |isbn=0-8264-6293-6 |location=London}}
* {{Cite journal |last=Kulick |first=Don |author-link=Don Kulick |date=April 2003 |title=No |url=https://humdev.uchicago.edu/sites/humdev.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/kulick/2003%20Kulick%20No.pdf |journal=Language & Communication |volume=23 |issue=2 |pages=139–151 |doi=10.1016/S0271-5309(02)00043-5 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150227113248/https://humdev.uchicago.edu/sites/humdev.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/kulick/2003%20Kulick%20No.pdf |archive-date=2015-02-27 }} Considers performativity from a linguistic perspective.
* {{Cite book |last=López |first=Silvia |title=Los cuerpos que importan en Judith Butler |publisher=Dos Bigotes |year=2019 |isbn=978-84-949674-2-9 |location=Madrid}}
* {{Cite book |last=Perreau |first=Bruno |author-link=Bruno Perreau |title=Queer Theory: The French Response |publisher=Stanford University Press |year=2004 |isbn=978-1-503-60044-7 |location=Stanford, CA}}
* {{Cite book |last=Salih |first=Sarah |title=The Judith Butler Reader |publisher=Blackwell |year=2004 |isbn=0-631-22594-3 |location=Malden, MA}}
* {{Cite book |last=Salih |first=Sarah |title=Routledge Critical Thinkers: Judith Butler |publisher=Routledge |year=2002 |isbn=0-415-21519-6 |location=New York}}
* {{Cite book |last=Schippers |first=Birgit |title=The Political Philosophy of Judith Butler |publisher=Routledge |year=2014 |isbn=978-0-415-52212-0 |location=New York}}
* {{Cite book |last=Thiem |first=Annika |title=Unbecoming Subjects: Judith Butler, Moral Philosophy, and Critical Responsibility |publisher=Fordham University Press |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-8232-2899-7 |location=New York}}
* {{Cite book |last=Zaharijevic |first=Adriana |title=Judith Butler and Politics |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |year=2023 |isbn=978-1399517089 |location=Edinburgh}}
{{refend}}

==Further reading==
* {{YouTube|8k91WwJIhl8|Avital Ronell, Judith Butler, Hélène Cixous}} approach the notion of affinity through a discussion of "Disruptive Kinship," co-sponsored by Villa Gillet and the School of Writing at The New School for Public Engagement.
* Interview of [http://www.newstatesman.com/2009/08/media-death-frames-war-obama Judith Butler about their new book] "Frames of War" on [[New Statesman]]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20110706214522/http://www.barcelonametropolis.cat/en/page.asp?id=22&ui=449 Review of ''"Giving an Account of Oneself. Ethical Violence and Responsibility"''], by Judith Butler, [[Barcelona Metropolis]] Autumn 2010. {{in lang|en}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20190423140627/https://rwm.macba.cat/en/sonia/judith_butler/capsula Interview with Judith Butler about politics, economy, control societies, gender and identity (2011)]
* {{YouTube|Rf4px4KyqbY|Judith Butler in conversation with Wesleyan University president Michael Roth}}
* ''[[The New Yorker|New Yorker]]'' magazine [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/06/judith-butler-profile profile] on Butler published in the print edition of May 6, 2024

==External links==
{{Commons category|Judith Butler}}
{{Wikiquote|Judith Butler}}
* [https://complit.berkeley.edu/user/95 Biography] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230926222306/https://complit.berkeley.edu/user/95 |date=September 26, 2023 }} – [[University of California, Berkeley]]
* [http://www.bookrags.com/biography/judith-p-butler-dlb/3.html "Dictionary of Literary Biography on Judith P. Butler (page 3)"]

{{Continental philosophy}}
{{Feminist theory}}
{{Social philosophy}}
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